


never mind the why and wherefore

by luninosity



Category: Fantastic Four (Movies), Political Animals
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, American Politics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathing/Washing, But Not Suicidal At All, Comfort, Comfort Sex, Consensual Kink, Crossover Pairings, Dom/sub Play, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Family Issues, First Meetings, Food Issues, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kink Negotiation, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Past Drug Addiction, Phone Sex, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Protective Johnny, Reconciliation, Recovery, Sex Toys, Sexual Content, Specifically TJ Trying To Make Himself Feel, in TJ's past, minor self-harm, will update tags with new chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:25:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4993717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TJ Hammond, thirteen weeks sober and lurking near the gala’s open bar as a kind of test of nonexistent willpower, saw Johnny Storm from across the room and thought: someone should dance with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and this should be his customary attitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kellyscams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kellyscams/gifts), [LeandraLocke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeandraLocke/gifts), [ViperSeven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViperSeven/gifts), [saturnmeetsmercury (jarofhearts)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofhearts/gifts).



> Because friends/enablers made me start thinking about it, and then this happened. Love you! (eta: that list includes [uncensoredsideblog on tumblr](http://uncensoredsideblog.tumblr.com/))
> 
> I THINK there are five chapters, unless there are six. We'll see.
> 
> Title and chapter titles courtesy of Gilbert and Sullivan's _H.M.S. Pinafore,_ if you were wondering.

TJ Hammond, thirteen weeks sober and lurking near the gala’s open bar as a kind of test of nonexistent willpower, saw Johnny Storm from across the room and thought: someone should dance with him.  
  
Johnny Storm was laughing at something a beautiful girl had said to him; he wore a tuxedo with casual rumpled stylishness, and his hands made a gesture: _do you want to dance?_ The party—some political benefit, tax-deductible charity causes, the poor or the artistic or the re-election seekers, TJ hadn’t really been paying attention—swooped and glittered with perilous delight. Men and women dressed to the nines, champagne-lit and sparkling. Money and power speaking volumes. Washington D.C. at play.  
  
He knew who Johnny Storm was. Everyone did.   
  
Johnny Storm probably knew who TJ Hammond was, though not necessarily by sight. Tabloid articles. First Son—ex-First Son, but likely to be again, trading parents in the White House—and favorite scandal. Hospital nights and spin-story allergic reactions—his brain supplied the air quotes—and every damn drug anyone could think of. And sex, oh yes, no forgetting the sex. With congressmen. Or strangers at clubs. Or anyone. If certain reports were to be believed.  
  
His head hurt, but that was fairly normal these days, so he ignored it. Watched Johnny Storm glow like a bonfire at the heart of the room: loud, brash, charismatic, bright-eyed.   
  
It’d been Johnny who’d nicknamed the Storm-Richards family the “Fantastic Four;” the name’d stuck, as with most things Johnny named. The Fantastic Four were all brilliant and heroic and generous: Johnny’s older sister Sue, a physicist in her own right, had married the genius Reed Richards, and their best friend and experimental test pilot Ben Grimm had come along, and they took the Baxter Foundation merrily ahead into the future, developing cutting-edge scientific discoveries and giving grants and scholarships to children and pouring money into alternative energy, disease cures, water-filtration devices given away for free.  
  
Johnny Storm, the younger sibling, raced motorcycles for fun, did stunts for charity, dated beautiful people indiscriminately and visibly. Tonight he was laughing, and shrugging off the girl’s rejection—she’d come with another date—and wandering toward the bar.  
  
Toward the bar. Where TJ was. Where TJ was staring.  
  
He thought fleetingly about backing up, about fleeing; nowhere to go, so he put his best smile on, the _yes I am who you think and I know you want to fuck me and why not, everyone else either has or wants to, haven’t you heard the rumors?_ smile, and waited.  
  
Johnny Storm looked him up and down—most people did, of course, but Johnny’s blue eyes were refreshingly blatant—and, rather surprisingly, said, “Are those space pants?”  
  
TJ stared down at his own tuxedo-clad legs for a second, looked up, and said, “…no?”  
  
“I was just asking,” Johnny said, “because your legs are out of this world,” and winked. An actual fucking wink. With a grin.  
  
TJ stared at him some more, felt an odd unaccustomed sensation bubble up someplace inside. His mouth did something. He wanted to put a hand up to find out; realized halfway through that that’d be bizarre behavior, stopped.  
  
“I like making you smile,” Johnny Storm decided, hands shoved in pockets, grin displayed in eyes, doing a happy little half-bounce on the soles of his feet. “You look like someone who should be smiling.”  
  
“Well.” Okay. Conversation. He could converse. “I’ve heard worse pick-up lines.”  
  
“Seriously? Because I really tried. I mean, I’m not sure I could’ve done worse than that.”  
  
“Hey.” And he meant it, he really did.  
  
“What? Am I bothering you? Can I bother you?”  
  
“I think your feet look tired,” TJ told him. “You should sit down. On my face.”  
  
And Johnny flung his head back and laughed: a full-body joyous kind of laugh, brilliant and unrestrained amid the upper-crust ballroom. A few people glanced around; conversation resumed.  
  
“I think you should dance with me,” Johnny went with in reply. “I’m a good dancer. And very attractive. And I’m great in bed.”  
  
“You don’t know who I am.”  
  
“Yeah I do. What’re you afraid of, stepping on my feet? Come on.”  
  
TJ considered options. His family was nowhere in sight, probably cultivating useful political connections in various corners. Some curious gazes and cameras were drifting their way: a White House scandalous child with the hotheaded fiery reckless youngest Storm. Who was smiling at him.  
  
That odd fluttery feeling came back in the pit of his stomach. Like vertigo, like—interest. Like something he might want. If he remembered how to want.   
  
The expensive fabric of his suit shivered along his body, his arms. Little tinglings like returning sensation, or the hope of it, after frostbite.  
  
“I don’t know how to dance,” he pointed out. He did, for a given value of _know_. He could dance in clubs. He could dance in the way that meant sex and sweat and slick bodies grinding against each other. He knew about timing and music-notes and the movements of hands across the keys of a piano.  
  
“I’ll make you look good.”  
  
TJ narrowed eyes at him. “ _I_ make me look good, thanks.”  
  
“And you do. Look good.” Johnny held out a hand, big palm and stunt-rider callused fingers, invitation and temptation.  
  
“Even in space pants.”  
  
“Or in nothing at all.” Johnny’s gaze swept up and down his body again: appreciative, but somehow politely so. Not lustful; desirous, yes, but TJ was suddenly absolutely one hundred percent convinced that Johnny would never touch him, would never push beyond innuendo, if told _no_ or _wait_ or _slow down_.  
  
A stray thought, sparkling as the sequins on dresses, darted in: we’re standing by the bar, it said, and he could’ve asked to get you a drink, he knows who you are, and he asked you to dance.  
  
He put his hand in the offered one.   
  
Johnny beamed at him—blue all lit up like he’d thought the answer might be no, like the answer mattered somehow, and why would TJ’s answer matter to someone who crackled like a flame?—and dragged him onto the dance floor, where cheerful inebriated attempts at a tango were happening among gala attendees.  
  
TJ tripped over his own feet twice, Johnny’s once, and someone else’s misplaced elbow another time; said, “This is ridiculous—” and realized that Johnny was laughing, not at all meanly, just entertained.   
  
“I didn’t believe you, but you were right.”  
  
“Trust me to be right about my own capabilities.” As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to cringe. Trust him? Trust him to know his own capacity for _anything?_   
  
He shut his eyes. Cocaine memories swam up: languorous, smoke-tinted, euphoric, dangerous.  
  
A hand touched his cheek. Johnny’s hand. They’d stopped moving. He opened his eyes.  
  
“Hey,” Johnny said, “you _were_ right, guess I _should_ trust you, so what was that idea you had about sitting on my face, or was that the other way around?” and TJ, surprised, started to laugh.  
  
Johnny spun him effortlessly in a circle, laughing too; and that certainly wasn’t a tango but somehow that didn’t matter, stepping on Johnny’s toes didn’t matter, because he felt weightless, like they could be weightless together.  
  
A while later, breathless, having steered them off the dance floor and over to a vacated corner, Johnny said, “I have to go.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“No, I’d stay, but I have a flight to catch. Two hours. Literally. From now. I meant to just make an appearance, you know, ’cause Sue dragged me along, Foundation representation and all that.”  
  
“Fine. Okay.”  
  
“I have to be in California tonight. Doing a motorbike stunt thing in two days. Fifteen flaming cars. With a flip. For some kids’ art charity. It’s a really good cause.”  
  
“Do you use that line with all the people you’re done with, or is it just me?”  
  
“What?” Johnny’s eyes got—not angry. Wider. Huge and blue, bright blue like slapped skies, and hurt. “TJ—you—that’s not what I—and that’s not fucking fair.”  
  
He’d expected the dismissal; he’d said the words that came to mind. He hadn’t expected to cause pain; how could someone like him ever hurt someone like Johnny Storm?  
  
His hands got cold. Their corner of the ballroom got colder. The words that came out this time, as he looked at Johnny’s wounded eyes, were, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Yeah.” Johnny sighed. Tired. Shoulders slumped. Earlier flame guttering. “Me, too. Maybe I—maybe this was a stupid thing to try to—I was going to say, you could, um. Never mind.”  
  
“I could what?”  
  
“Well…”  
  
“Tell me.” Every drop of winsome charm, every best flirtatious inflection thrown into the mix, because Johnny Storm should never look like a wet heap of sad puppy; Johnny Storm should be burning brightly and making hearts remember how to smile. “Please.”  
  
“Don’t do that.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Don’t…” Johnny waved a hand. “Pretend. Seduce me. Whatever you’re doing. It works and I miss you.”  
  
TJ, astonished—and how many times was that, this evening?—stopped talking.  
  
“I was going to ask you if you wanted to come,” Johnny said. “I mean, if you. Had the time. Wanted to. Your schedule—I don’t know your schedule. If you even like motorcycle stunts. Like I said, never mind.”  
  
“I don’t know anything about motorcycles. And _I_ don’t know my own schedule.” Still astonished; too blunt, he figured out as Johnny’s face changed.  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ll see you around, TJ—”  
  
“Wait. Please. I—okay. Do you, um, drink a lot of milk? Because something’s doing your body good?”  
  
“Really?” But Johnny’s lips twitched. “That’s what you’re going with? Not even how _you_ could do my body good?”  
  
“It was better—worse—than yours, space pants.” Please, please. “And I really don’t know my schedule. They tell me where I’m supposed to be.” Especially these days, everyone practically sitting on him to keep him sober, except for nights when political concerns took precedence. Nights like this one. “Two days, you said. California.”  
  
“You don’t have to,” Johnny said, but his eyes were hopeful, and his hand came back and touched TJ’s cheek, the way it had on the dance floor: slow and soothing and maybe soothed on that side too. “But maybe I can see you when I get back?”  
  
TJ, words scattered by the presence of the hand, could only nod.  
  
“Okay,” Johnny said, and left: left without even kissing him, left with the imprint of heat from that hand remaining _like_ a kiss, sweet and visceral and scorching.   
  
TJ sagged back against the wall and listened to his own heart race, and thought: I should probably be thinking I need a drink, but I don’t, I need to sit down, I need to figure out what this weird lightheaded giddy feeling is, I need to find a men’s room or a fucking _coat_ closet at this point and take care of this _wanting_ , because there’s no way that’s not visible, because those hands on me, oh god, oh yes, yes please.  
  
He ducked out the closest ballroom exit. In a men’s room, in a back stall, while the party went on outside, he got a hand around his cock, stroked, imagined. Johnny Storm. Dancing with him, laughing, running hands all over him, up and down—  
  
He gasped, shuddered, came _hard_ , flung his other hand across his mouth and bit down to stifle the sound.   
  
He’d gotten off in sordid men’s rooms, back rooms at clubs, even once or twice on a dance floor. He’d always been good at muffling sound, at getting away with everything and more. The _thought_ of Johnny’s hands had made him nearly scream.  
  
Years of practice at cleaning up and concealment stood him in good stead; he finished making himself presentable, strolled out the door—cheeks flushed but breathing mostly normal—and ran into his twin.   
  
Douglas was somehow managing to look cross, and to cross arms, without rumpling his stylish-yet-conservative suit, because Douglas was the good one. TJ started walking down the hall. Ineffectively so; his brother came along.  
  
“That was Johnny Storm you were dancing with.”   
  
“So now you’re in charge of who I dance with. That’s a new one.”  
  
“Johnny Storm’s not a bad guy.” Douglas kept up with him effortlessly. “He’s kind of even a good guy. But he _is_ a playboy. He sleeps around. He has affairs. He goes to parties. He’s not the kind of guy who’s gonna stick around.”  
  
“Maybe _I’m_ not the kind of guy who sticks around.” And those were just words fired at random, but his twin flinched from hospital memories: from attempts at _not_ being around, both deliberate and half-accidental. He amended, “What if I don’t need a guy who’ll stick around?”  
  
“You?” Doug’s smile was sad, broken, aware of the tragedy. “You do. Because we never did that for you.”  
  
TJ paused, foot in the air, considering his brother. They’d changed, he thought; they’d all changed. Of course, they’d changed once already. How they’d gotten here, in a hallway where Doug’s eyes watched him for signs of careless inebriation. “How’s Anne?”  
  
“She’s busy charming a congressman from Vermont.” Douglas’s expression softened the way it always did at any mention of his pretty and politically savvy wife. “Don’t change the subject. Johnny Storm.”  
  
“I thought you were done.”  
  
“I’m just trying to—”  
  
“To rescue me.” TJ turned the sting into a smile: “I would’ve needed it. Before.”   
  
“Before…” Douglas sighed. “You’re different.”  
  
“Sober, you mean? I realize we’re not very familiar with sober me, but come on, it’s been like three months, you might have to get used to it on a permanent basis at this rate.”  
  
“TJ…”  
  
“He’s not Sean,” TJ said. “And I’m not in love with anyone. It was one dance. One.” The glaring specter of Sean Reeves hung between them for an instant: golden-boy politician’s veneer hiding black ugly cowardice and refusal to love without shame.  
  
He didn’t mention the way he’d just gotten off in a men’s room to only the memory of the heat of Johnny’s hand caressing his face. He didn’t mention the sparklers that fizzed under his skin when he made Johnny Storm smile.  
  
He wasn’t in love. Just a smile.   
  
“Okay,” Doug agreed, obviously trying to be understanding, obviously trying to be kind. “If you say so.”   
  
“I say so,” TJ repeated determinedly, and ignored the inexplicable sinking weight in his chest, and went back to the ballroom to shake sweaty hands and be his mother’s prodigal son come home.  
 


	2. choruses yield little consolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an invitation arrives, a Hammond family brunch occurs, and TJ makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter after this one: lots of cuddles plus lots of porn. Just so you know.

An envelope showed up the next morning, handed over by the unsmiling secretary who vetted family correspondence. TJ tended to ignore most of his mail—undesired love letters, pleas for him to come be the face of some cause or other, notes currying favor or asking for favors—but this one caught his attention.   
  
He turned over the envelope, aware that he was standing poised in the middle of his room wearing pajama pants and a long-sleeved fuzzy shirt with a kitten on the front—since giving up various intoxicants, he tended to run cold, and the general lack of appetite meant he’d actually lost weight—and that this moment would be remembered and discussed and dissected by the entire Hammond family staff behind the scenes.  
  
He curled his toes into the carpet, into the spot of sunlight. He’d worn socks to bed, but kicked them off sometime in the night. He’d not found the left one again. He hoped the right one wasn’t lonely.  
  
He hoped Johnny Storm wasn’t lonely.  
  
He ran a thumb along the envelope, tracing the scrawl of Johnny’s name as the sender and then his own as the addressee. Hand-delivered, the secretary’d said. Courier.  
  
He opened it up. One ticket fell out, and one backstage pass. He barely caught both before they fluttered to the floor.  
  
An arena. California. Johnny’s event. Stunt tricks, on a motorcycle, for charity. No accompanying note.  
  
He said, “Thank you,” to the secretary, who vanished into thin air, taking her mental notes along. He set the envelope on his dresser, and watched it for a while. It did nothing else. No explosions or earth-shattering revelations or thunderous voices booming out to clarify his next move.  
  
Sitting on the end of the bed, avoiding the faces of paper possibility, he tucked his feet under sheet-hills and found his phone and called his sponsor.  
  
“You’re early,” Don said, picking up. Don Blake was older, calmer, and innately kinder than TJ, dark-skinned and agile with the cane he only sometimes needed; TJ liked him immensely and pretended hard not to. “Last night go okay, or you need to meet up?”  
  
“I’m okay. It was…what it always is.” A shrug that wouldn’t transmit over the phone. He didn’t go to meetings—he’d gone to three at the beginning, but his schedule and notoriety made that difficult, and they’d worked out a private system of checking in at least once a week. “I just. I don’t know. Wanted to talk.”  
  
“Sure.” Don sounded a little out of breath; TJ offered hesitantly, “If you’re busy—”  
  
“Nope, I was weeding the garden, gotta control the wild zucchini, y’know? Okay, I’m sitting down, kiddo, shoot.”  
  
TJ wished momentarily for an old-fashioned phone: a cord he could wrap around fingers, a dial to fiddle with. He wriggled toes under the blanket. Discovered his missing sock. Huh.  
  
“I can listen to you not talk,” Don said, “if you want.”  
  
He played with the sock. It didn’t mind; it let him crumple it up and twist it around, apologetic about the midnight disappearing act. “Wouldn’t that be a waste of everyone’s time?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking. About it. I got distracted.”  
  
“And by what, exactly,” Don said, not quite concerned, heading that way.  
  
“I. Sort of. I think I. Met someone.”  
  
“You sort of think you met someone?”  
  
TJ glared at the phone. “I met someone. He made me smile.” He thought about this, then added, “I think I made him laugh.”  
  
Don waited.  
  
“He invited me to a. A performance. An event. Of his. In California.” He wasn’t going to drag Johnny’s name into this. Not when he wasn’t even sure what this was. “Should I go?”  
  
“Well,” Don said. “That’s an interesting one. And please note that I’m not your _relationship_ counselor, kiddo.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re only good for growing feral zucchini, got it.”  
  
“Don’t do anything rash. That’s the first thing I’m gonna say. You know where you are, how okay you’re feeling, and you know what you’re ready for and what you’re not, and don’t jump into anything without thinking it through, okay?”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“I’m not finished.”  
  
“Oh, _good_.”  
  
“You’re a real ass in the morning, kid. Okay. So also—don’t be scared to want something. If you want this, if you take a good hard look at this guy—stop laughing, some of us don’t think in gay sex innuendo, I realize that’s difficult to comprehend—if you look at this guy, and you want this, if you feel like he makes you smile and you could maybe want that, then it’s okay to want things. You do get to have nice things.”  
  
“I do?” Only half sarcastic; that half won out with last-ditch desperate effort.  
  
“You’re gonna have to be honest with yourself,” Don warned. “You know what’s good for you, these days. You know what’s not. And I don’t know this guy, so you’re gonna have to be the judge of that. You like him. And if you feel good around him, and you think maybe he feels the same way, then you can think about making that leap.”  
  
“So don’t be rash, and also make a leap.” He tossed the sock across the room. It hit his dresser and bounced off. “Thanks for the lack of clarification.”  
  
“Hey, you called me.”  
  
“I love these little chats of ours. Should I go to California?”  
  
“Do what feels like the right thing for your recovery,” Don said, “which may not be the same as what feels good. Or it might. Please don’t give me the play-by-play of the magical gay sex if it happens.”  
  
“You live vicariously through me,” TJ said, “I’ll talk to you in a week,” and hung up, and lay on his bed staring at the ceiling for a while. And then he got up, because he was late for the Hammond family weekend brunch, and ran downstairs.  
  
Which was, as ever, awash with family and politics. His mother was on her third cup of coffee and reading over a drafted speech. His grandmother was sipping a martini and pretending she wasn’t keeping eagle eyes on every Hammond and Hammond-by-associate in the vicinity. His father was holding forth on the grandiosity of the White House kitchens versus those of this house, which TJ generally considered to be perfectly adequate, not that he’d been eating much lately. They weren’t located _in_ the White House, though, merely the family house-in-waiting while Elaine campaigned for the presidential nomination, and for Bud that was never quite good enough.  
  
“—I’m just saying they don’t know how to grill a decent steak. TJ,” Bud added, “you doin’ okay, son?”  
  
Son. Down-home and folksy. The voters’d eaten that up, back in his father’s presidency. “Fine.”  
  
“Sleeping in?” his mother inquired, in a tone she probably thought was subtle. She’d need practice before delivering that speech, TJ estimated.  
  
He smiled at her and sat down. This seemed to be sufficient, since she went back to the speech without asking again, and underlined a phrase.   
  
He’d not _exactly_ moved back in—he’d kept his apartment, needing space, needing a place that was his—with the family after rehab. His mother’d wanted him home; he’d been off-balance and unwilling to fight another battle on a second front. They’d compromised on him staying over most nights, particularly on weekends. He knew this made the family look united and loving, in the papers.  
  
He also didn’t yet know how he felt about his apartment. That apartment, where every surface and wall and piano-note had once hummed with Sean’s vitality, where bed and kitchen counter and blankets spoke of Sean’s hands tracing desire across his skin.  
  
He’d paid someone to take every stick of furniture away. He now had an empty apartment, with a brand-new bed and a brand-new sofa and blank walls. And he had his bedroom here. This house.  
  
A spoonful of scrambled eggs landed on his plate, which obviously wasn’t his doing; this meant that Douglas remembered last night’s conversation and had decided to try to take care of his twin via poultry-based breakfast food. TJ engaged in a staring contest with the shiny heap. Maybe toast.  
  
“It’s all but assured,” Bud said, reading over the morning’s numbers. “Honestly, you’re so far out in front, nobody’s gonna touch you, this race is over.”  
  
“Two weeks until official nominations,” Elaine said, but she sounded pleased. The conclusion was fairly foregone. Had been for some time. “And of course we’ll have Cabinet posts to think about…ambassadorships…Douglas, you could go to England, with Anne, of course…” Anne smiled demurely, every inch of her polished and tidy even for a family meal, and ate her own eggs.  
  
“You’ll get to appoint two Supreme Court justices if the old men step down,” Bud mused. “I’ve got an idea or two.”  
  
“So do I.” Elaine grinned at him: wicked, cheeky, trademark-sharp. Born to play with power, both of them, his parents.  
  
The toast seemed to be making okay friends with his stomach, today. He did not look at his grandmother’s morning martini. He could smell the vodka. Might be his imagination.  
  
He’d had alcohol since the great sobering-up commitment, of course—unavoidable given the D.C. lifestyle—but only one glass of champagne, or one beer, per event, and even then only maybe once or twice in the last three months. Testing. Success. For a certain value thereof.  
  
His grandmother’d declared herself too old to care what anyone else thought or needed, and took the view that TJ needed to learn to handle his own problems without expecting other people to change. She wasn’t entirely wrong, he thought, as he always thought; and poured himself orange juice. The flavor bit like acid into his tongue.  
  
His twin, brimming over with well-meaning, asked, “What can we find for TJ to do in your administration, Mom?”  
  
Eyes swiveled his direction. He hid behind the too-sharp orange juice.  
  
“Hmm,” Elaine said. “Well, what could you handle, sweetheart?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You must have some ideas. You used to play the piano so beautifully…something with the arts—”  
  
“I don’t play anymore,” TJ said. His hands might be steady again, or they might be less so: no longer infused with the grace of drunken angels.  
  
“Of course if you don’t feel up to it you don’t have to,” his mother said.  
  
“I thought I might,” TJ said, “do something. Like…open up a clinic. Counseling center. For recovering—people in recovery.” He poked at eggs with his fork. They flopped around in blobs of slimy yellow. He couldn’t look away. Mesmerized.  
  
“Oh, sweetie,” his mother said. “That’s such a good idea, of course it is, we’ll give you the money if you want to make a donation, but—”  
  
“But what your mother means,” his father picked up, right on cue, “is that it might not be, well, a good idea for you to—to be around those sorts of people, to expose yourself to—you’d be right back in there, and—how about we make it part of your campaign strategy, Elaine, better funding for recovery and addiction help, really caring about the people who’re suffering—”  
  
“Besides,” Anne put in, helping, “you have your nightclub, don’t you, that’s doing well—”  
  
“The club that you won’t let me visit.”  
  
“But you do understand why, you know that atmosphere, and the image, of course it’s going well but you don’t need to _be_ there, you remember what—happened—at the opening—” His mother faltered.  
  
“I remember,” TJ said to the eggs. To the cocaine high and shattered heart he’d tried to kill, overdosing in that back room, when his family and the man he’d loved had turned down his invitation to said opening.  
  
The fact of the nightclub’s undeniable subsequent success, newfound central oasis for the young and rich and politically connected, went unmentioned as ever; he did not bring it up, and his family did not either.  
  
His grandmother took another sip of her vodka, and announced, “I think it’s an excellent idea. You should do what you want to, darling—”  
  
“Margaret, please don’t enable him—”  
  
“—and to hell with the rest of this family.”  
  
“I’m not sure that’s what I want,” TJ said, but very quietly; so quietly, in fact, that only the dilapidated eggs heard, and they didn’t care.  
  
“We’ll make time to talk about it,” his mother suggested, and patted his shoulder. “I promise we’ll make time for you. We could, oh, let you be the family representative at the opening of—a new center for rehabilitation, maybe, a clinic that we can set aside funding for, you can do the opening ceremony, how’s that?”  
  
TJ said nothing.  
  
The conversation carried on without him: plans and debates and discussions. Election policies. Genial arguments between his father and his brother over the position of the electorate on health insurance reform. The scents of vodka and juice, toast and coffee. The burning of the late-morning sun at his back.  
  
He got up, and brought dishes over to the sink—Douglas watched him, but seemed to decide that his twin wasn’t planning to open up a vein with a breakfast fork, and went back to debating employer and employee cost-benefit numbers—and faded noiselessly out of the kitchen.  
  
Up in his bedroom, he found the ticket and backstage pass sitting where he’d left them on his dresser. They perked up as he came in.   
  
“What the hell,” he said, aloud, “California,” and grabbed a spare pair of jeans.


	3. what, never? well, hardly ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> California. Praise kink. An interlude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a very long chapter.
> 
> It wasn't originally going to slide into D/s territory, but then it...just...did? I don't know. Enjoy?

California shimmered grey and misty, which contradicted everything he’d ever heard about the state; but TJ could taste sea-spray in the air, or he thought so, and that made him think of blue eyes and open water. He ended up smiling.   
  
He barely had time to find a hotel before Johnny’s event—the Secret Service detail no doubt was having whole litters of kittens about the last-minute arrangements—but did have time to stare at his single bag and feel minor panic. What _did_ one wear to a motorcycle stunt jump for charity?    
  
Probably not trendy loopy scarves. Maybe skinny jeans? He locked eyes with a simple grey t-shirt. At least he’d brought the leather jacket. And black boots.    
  
He threw clothing on, ran out the door, let the sea-spray mist tangle in his hair. The Secret Service said nothing, merely trailed him around like a bonus silent shadow. They didn’t care what he did or who he did; they cared about external threats, assassination scares, physical danger.    
  
On an impulse, he said, “Thank you,” to the nondescript average-build deadly weapon outside his hotel room. The man blinked. Surprise. TJ grinned, enjoyed being unpredictable, hopped into a taxi.   
  
Johnny’s arena, when he got there, roared. The beast of it swelled and purred and shouted: masses of excitable humanity, bright lights, sand and dust and beer and peanuts mingling in the air. A small team of opening-act riders was out entertaining the crowd, zipping up and down concrete half-pipes, doing tricks and spins. Johnny Storm was nowhere to be seen.    
  
TJ found his spot—Johnny’d put him front and center, and also near an exit—and tried to catch his breath. The noisy enthusiasm ensnared his heartbeat, and made it faster.   
  
The opening team whirled away. The crowd cheered, and started chanting; the large man behind him gestured exuberantly with cheap light beer, sloshing some of it. The evening hung poised, raw and rough and dirty.   
  
TJ, in the stands with motorcycle-adoring humanity, trying to avoid a sticky spot under his left boot, thought very clearly: what am I doing, why am I here, what the hell is _that_ , never mind, I don’t want to know.   
  
But his pulse raced regardless.   
  
The crowd yelled, “Human Torch!”   
  
And Johnny Storm—stage-named the Human Torch—rocketed out from the back of the arena. Blue and black leathers. Sleek black bike. It rumbled like a siren-goddess: an ancient one, powerful and dark and strong. Johnny raced her around the arena once, tracing the perimeter, a dazzling streak of motion.   
  
TJ caught himself leaning forward. He knew Johnny couldn’t see him. Nevertheless: there he was. Leaning.   
  
Johnny flew up onto the top platforms, the launching-points for jumps—TJ, not being any sort of familiar with _any_ element of the night, had no idea what they were called, if they had names—and started off with speed and style: height and clean-cut lines, speed, grace. Body and bike extensions of each other, leather and chrome.   
  
One flip. Two. A complicated sort of spin. A move that involved Johnny kicking legs free, only anchored by hand-grips. TJ was captivated and terrified and in awe; he was on his feet, his own hands gripping the hand-rail of the stands. Johnny Storm: perilous and elemental and beautiful as a comet, playing with combustion and ignition and power.   
  
Johnny’s big finale involved a long-distance jump: old cars were being pushed into position between ramps, many cars, no soft surfaces to land on if he faltered, and—   
  
And the cars got lit on fire.   
  
Flames billowed. TJ, mouth dry, body aroused and tingling and alive and horrified—he couldn’t watch, but he could, he _had_ to—heard himself say Johnny’s name, voice lost in the cacophony.   
  
Johnny, face hidden behind black helmet, zoomed around the arena, gathering cheers like momentum.   
  
TJ wanted to blow him a kiss. Wanted _to_ kiss him, vital and blazing; thought that maybe it was his own imagination that Johnny’s helmet turned briefly toward his spot in the stands.   
  
Johnny flew up onto the ramp, launched himself and the bike across fire. Soared.   
  
And landed safely. To cheers. TJ sagged, exhausted as if he’d been in flight too.    
  
The announcer said something about charity and proceeds from the night’s events. Johnny waved and took off, not sticking around for congratulations.   
  
TJ squirmed past noisy spectators, stepped on feet and was stepped on, threaded his way through beer and peanuts and bulky human beings; waved his backstage pass at security guards, getting breath back.   
  
The closest guard squinted at him, shrugged, gestured: go on. TJ went, still breathless, rationality having yet to keep up with his toes.   
  
He wandered around behind the arena. No sign of Johnny, though he passed a pretty girl in skimpy clothing carrying motorcycle leathers plus a whiff of smoke. He swallowed.   
  
He found a room with a sign on it. The sign said “Human Torch Changing Area! Beware!” with a little cartoon sketch of Johnny on fire, followed by a string of post-it notes: _thanks, guys_ , and _we heart you Johnny_ and _don’t worry, we won’t let anyone see you naked, boss,_ and, in the first messy hand again, _depends on the anyone in question!_ plus a tiny winky face. Johnny’s support crew clearly adored him.   
  
TJ lifted a hand. On the way to knocking, stopped. His hand and Johnny Storm’s door.   
  
Johnny’s crew did adore him. A whole arena full of spectators adored him. The world adored him: a beacon, a daredevil, a man who’d throw himself across fire for charity causes.    
  
Those words hung scribbled in that handwriting on that final post-it: anyone might be let in to bask in the glow. Anyone Johnny wanted. Any night.   
  
His hand was thinner these days, the way all of him was thinner in the aftermath of battle: long-fingered and pale and a little shaky, dressed in a black leather jacket with slightly too-long fashionable sleeves. Nobody’s beacon. Nobody’s blazing signal fire. Poised over Johnny’s door.   
  
He couldn’t.   
  
He curled fingers in, not touching quiet wood.   
  
He stood outside Johnny’s changing room, in the empty hallway, and he couldn’t.   
  
He knew he was a coward. He knew.   
  
He turned without knocking. He walked away very very fast.   
  
He might’ve heard the sound of a door opening, but he was already at the exit, and he did not look back.    
  
He ducked out into the California night, palm trees and freeways and glittering lights, and he fell into the first cab to show up and gave desperate fumbling directions to his hotel, and he put his face in his hands and breathed through muffling fingers for a minute, sitting in the backseat of the anonymous taxi with the ripped seat-cover; but he did not cry.   
  
Back at the hotel. Boots off. Jacket off. Eyes burning. Scents of smoke, both cigarette and pot; scents of alcohol and bodies. His own clammy sweat. He flopped prone across the forgiving bed. Gathered up a pillow in one blind arm, a companion to scream into.   
  
A knock rattled around the room’s bland features. A knock on _his_ door.   
  
TJ rolled over. Stared at the offending rectangle.   
  
One more knock. He glanced around, as if that’d provide any sort of clue, then got up and went over there, but didn’t open up. Kept a wary distance.   
  
“TJ,” Johnny’s voice said. “TJ? I know you’re in there.”   
  
TJ yanked open the door.   
  
“Hi,” Johnny Storm said. He was out of breath, in the way of someone in excellent shape who’d recently jumped on a motorcycle and chased after a man and then taken stairs three at a time. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a vintage leather jacket, and he smiled like optimistic horizons.   
  
How the fuck did you know I was here, TJ wanted to ask, and _why_ are you here, why did you come, why did you want to come, why did my heart just try to kick me in the ribs and then turn into butterflies, what’s Johnny Storm doing here at my door and smiling like _that_ …   
  
The words that came out were, “What the fuck?”   
  
“Well,” Johnny said, “you were outside my changing room, and I didn’t think you saw me open the door, and I didn’t want to deprive you of my presence, I’m a very awesome presence, you came all the way out here and I didn’t want you to miss me, and if that’s not enough I brought Coke,” and held up a six-pack of real old-fashioned elegant glass bottles, which clinked encouragingly.   
  
“Wow,” TJ said, “most people walk on eggshells about the whole cocaine addiction thing, but not you, you just dive right in.”   
  
And Johnny’s expression slid into horror. “Oh shit I’m so sorry I didn’t even think I can just leave—”   
  
“Come in.” TJ held the door for him. “I suppose I can handle not being deprived of your presence. Coke?”   
  
“Well…I know you don’t, um…and I like sugar, so, um. Coke. Classic.” Johnny set the bottles atop the hotel-room mini-fridge. “I’m still sorry. God. Sue always tells me my mouth’s gonna get me in trouble.”   
  
“You’re not in trouble.” Best bedroom eyes, turned that way, casually angling himself closer: touching distance. “Yet. For the record, I can have a single beer. I’ve got limits now.”   
  
Johnny licked his lips. Tracked TJ’s mouth through the words. Not immune to the eyes, then. This was only disappointing in a small-scale way: too easy. Too easy for Johnny to want him; and even though that’d been half the plan the moment he’d gotten on a California-bound plane, his stomach hurt with knowing. No different from anyone else after all. No different from Sean.   
  
No. Unfair. Sean had never wanted to be seen with him. Sean had never wanted his dirty little secret gathering light.    
  
Johnny had danced with him in public the first night they’d met.    
  
He located a smile, one that came leaping up from noplace he knew.   
  
Johnny stepped closer and put arms around him, but only leaned in, forehead to forehead. He felt warm and big and broad-shouldered, like he could deflect all the wind in the world. He didn’t try for a kiss; TJ, confused by affection, froze.   
  
“For the record,” Johnny echoed, low and unhurried, “I never drink before shows, which means I don’t party as much as the media circus thinks, and even after, I don’t always go out and get trashed on free Screaming Orgasm shots.”   
  
“Only sometimes.”   
  
“A few years ago, sure.” Not offended; honest. “It’s an adrenaline thing. That buzz after a good show, the high, like flying, like soaking up the whole crowd through your skin, and you just kinda want to keep riding it…”   
  
“But you’re here.”   
  
“But I don’t need to go out to a club and chug tequila to feel it. I can feel it here.” Johnny paused, grinned, solemnly intoned, “You make my heart race, TJ.”   
  
“Caffeine,” TJ said, “is probably bad for you, then,” and didn’t pull away or give ground, despite the strange newborn wobbly feeling that was making his knees go weak. “How’d you find my room?”   
  
“James Buchanan? Not exactly subtle as far as guest registry, Mr President Thomas Jefferson.”   
  
“Fine,” TJ decided, bravado thudding through his chest, “maybe I wanted you to find me,” and leaned in and up and breathed an almost-kiss, a teasing tempting coax of a kiss, across Johnny Storm’s lips.   
  
Johnny muttered some indecipherable phrase. Sounded a lot like gratitude to a deity, TJ guessed, and then ended up wildly distracted, because kissing Johnny Storm, oh yes, yes.   
  
Johnny kissed like his name: electric and powerful, undeniable and omnipresent. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted seemed to involve paying devout attention to every millimeter of TJ’s mouth: licking deeply, tasting corners, nibbling at a lower lip. Johnny’s hands wandered: TJ’s waist, hips, ass. TJ arched his back, fell into the kiss, fell into Johnny’s heat. His lip sung and shivered where Johnny’d bitten down.   
  
They stumbled toward the bed. TJ yanked at Johnny’s shirt, impatient; Johnny kissed him again, swift and proprietary, hands in TJ’s hair. Their hips rocked together; the rigid line of Johnny’s cock rubbed against TJ’s own aching need, and he moaned. Johnny Storm. Finding him. Please.   
  
Johnny stopped, one hand cradling TJ’s cheek, one hand poised on his own jeans. His expression asked the question; TJ retorted, “Yes, yeah, _yes_ , I want you to fuck me,” though the words came out more breathy than exasperated. Something in him liked the way Johnny’d stopped to make sure.   
  
Johnny’s eyes darkened. Smoldering cobalt blue. “You want me to fuck you?”   
  
“Unless you’d rather it be the other way around.”   
  
Now Johnny looked genuinely startled, as if that possibility hadn’t occurred to him; TJ sighed. “Let’s get this one out of the way. I like both. I prefer bottoming, I like the way that feels, but I can top if you want, and I’ll like it. Any other assumptions you want to make about me?”   
  
“That…wasn’t it.”   
  
TJ hesitated, unsure.   
  
Johnny kicked his jeans out of the way. His erection hadn’t subsided; it jutted out, proudly stretching blue boxer-briefs. “I didn’t think you’d think I would. Offer. That. I have before.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“You know I’m bisexual,” Johnny said, so earnestly that TJ’s cynicism wanted to mock him. “Or everything-sexual, I guess. I like _fun_. I’ve—yeah. I mean, it’s not my usual, I _like_ being on top, but—most people just assume. That the guy in the motorcycle leathers with the big dick likes to top. So…thanks.”   
  
His cynicism deflated itself. “Oh. Ah…no…problem?” Too tentative. “I like your big dick.” Better.   
  
Johnny’s grin came back in force. “Thought you might. Awesome presence. I did say.”   
  
“Oh, shut up and fuck me,” TJ grumbled, shoving him down onto the bed; it wasn’t a hard shove, but Johnny went willingly, and on the way grabbed his arms and swooped a leg around so TJ flopped onto the bed too, half atop athlete’s muscles.   
  
“Ow,” Johnny said. “Move your elbow. Which is a pointy elbow, what the hell, what’ve you been eating, like, sticks?”   
  
“Don’t insult the person you’re trying to have sex with. And that doesn’t even make sense. And…I’m not hungry. Lately. Much. I want your hand over _here_.”   
  
“TJ—”   
  
“Maybe I should start with some wood,” TJ said, and slid down Johnny’s body, and got his mouth on Johnny’s cock. It was indeed big, and flushed, and male, and a little damp and sweet-salty from early arousal; he thought he could memorize the weight and size of it on his tongue, in his mouth, forever.    
  
Johnny was laughing, which made his whole body shake. TJ stopped, looked up, and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone laugh while I’m doing this before,” and Johnny laughed more, helplessly, and held out arms. “Come here.”   
  
“I was _busy_.”   
  
“Come here _please_ ,” Johnny said, and tugged him into a kiss, and TJ ended up laughing too.    
  
In bed. Naked. Desire pooling in the pit of his stomach. And he was laughing, because this was fun, god, sex could be stress-free and bitterness-free and _fun_. Johnny kept kissing him, curious and fascinated and playful, wanting to get hands and mouth into everything; TJ laughed more, tried to kiss him back, tried to keep up. Johnny questioned into his stomach, “Got—um—”   
  
“Yes and yes. Here.” Condoms and lube, in his bag, conveniently by the bed where he’d dropped it. “I want you.”   
  
“Yeah, I kinda got that,” Johnny agreed, grinning down at him: sex-heated and gorgeous and smug, as TJ lay sprawled across the mattress under muscular weight. “You always this impatient in bed, or is it just me you can’t resist?”   
  
TJ stared at him balefully, said, “I’ve changed my mind, I think I should prove I _can_ resist you, get the fuck out,” and then wrapped both legs around Johnny’s unfairly slim waist: keeping him there.   
  
“You don’t mean that.” Johnny made it a joke, but it wasn’t, quite; not with the hesitation in the words, the way his body stilled.   
  
“Of course I don’t. You’re irresistible, you win, come make love to me, Johnny Storm.” Because Johnny didn’t appear wholly convinced, he put one hand into helmet-mussed short dark blond hair and pulled that head down. One more kiss. Thorough, and thoroughly filthy. “Now fuck me.”   
  
Johnny seemed a little kiss-dazed. “Okay.”   
  
TJ stretched arms over his head, stretched himself across the bed: watched Johnny’s eyes darken. “Or should I get started on my own?”   
  
Johnny made a sound that was very nearly a growl, and pounced.   
  
Johnny’s fingers felt good and the lube felt good, cool and slick combined with large blunt penetration; Johnny tried to be gentle but was impatient too, hasty prep, working him open and ready. The first intrusion burned, but in a glorious way, sizzling along all his nerves. He whined for more, shoved himself hard against Johnny’s hand, lifted his hips. Johnny steadied him with the other hand, talked to him, said his name, swore softly: hushed awestruck blasphemies.   
  
The fingers curled up and found that spot, pressing _hard_ ; TJ saw sparks, gasped, tensed all over. Johnny let up for a moment to kiss him. Then did it again. And stopped _again_. TJ, practically sobbing from frustrated flirtations with ecstasy, forgot to be self-conscious about weight and brittleness, forgot to wish that he could be someone more worthy, forgot everything except Johnny’s hand moving inside him and Johnny’s mouth caressing his throat. He begged, “Please,” and Johnny stroked him one more time deep inside and slid the hand away and fit himself there instead, cock huge and hot and insistent as it pressed against his rim.   
  
Johnny met his eyes. TJ nodded. Johnny pushed. Inside him.   
  
And that felt, oh, that felt—   
  
Right. Like completion.    
  
Johnny moved inside him, one long thrust, then another: buried to the hilt. TJ moaned, tried to rock hips against him, tried to plead for more, faster, harder, so that he could feel that cock and that desire through every inch of him. Johnny seemed to understand, and sped up: pounding into him, not gentle now, claiming him and taking him and _wanting_ him, fiercely so. TJ felt his toes curl, felt his body tighten—so close, god, so fast, so merciless—and he moved a hand to wrap around his cock but Johnny grabbed that hand, both his hands, and pinned them to the mattress—and then put his own hand around TJ’s straining dripping length. And stroked, equally rough, in time with the pounding.   
  
TJ’s vision whited out. He might’ve screamed. He did know he was coming; the orgasm began in that quivering spot deep inside, where Johnny’s cock relentlessly battered firework nerves, but it rattled through his bones and along his spine and spilled out in sticky jets.    
  
Distantly he felt Johnny’s climax too: shorter harder thrusts, a groan, cock flooding its release into the condom inside him. He might’ve come again, or just more, delirious waves of aftershock at the sensation as Johnny collapsed atop him, panting.   
  
“Wow,” Johnny managed eventually.   
  
“Mmm.” He felt wonderful. Nonverbal, and tingly everyplace, and sated, and wonderful. He tucked his face into Johnny’s neck, breathing. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d simply wanted to stay in one place; he wanted Johnny’s weight atop him and inside him forever.   
  
“Good sound?” Johnny, not privy to those hopeless wishes, pushed himself up: balanced on elbows, hovering above, taking his own weight. TJ’s body felt lonely; but then he looked at Johnny’s worried eyes, and the loneliness unexpectedly eased. “Or not good sound? Too rough?”   
  
“Perfect,” TJ said, “I was right, I do like your big dick.”    
  
“Nobody’s _perfect_ ,” Johnny said, laughing, “not on a first try—TJ? You okay? Oh, shit, I did hurt you, I’m so sorry—”   
  
“No, no—it’s just—” What you said. Right now. Those words. You said those words to me. If I ever thought I could have a second try at perfect I think I’d want to try with you. I’m terrified. Please go. Please stay. “It’s been a while. Not your fault.”   
  
“Hmm,” Johnny said, and leaned down to bump their noses together, not a kiss. “Never mind. I take it back. Someone here’s perfect. You.”   
  
“Suffering from smoke inhalation damage,” TJ said, lightly, “I think it’s messing with your brain, sorry,” and glanced away, over Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny’s cock was softening and slipping inside him: his body wanted Johnny to stay but was very aware of its own messiness now, lube and condom and sticky trails.    
  
“TJ—oh, fuck, hang on.” Johnny pulled out, disposed of condom, grabbed tissues, grabbed TJ’s leg. “Hold still.”   
  
“You—”   
  
“I’m taking care of you.” With large gentlemanly hands: cleaning him up, checking him over, looking for hurt. “Are you sore? I know I was kinda—at the end—”   
  
“No,” TJ said, “I’m fine, I liked it, I—” and then stopped, because he felt like crying and he didn’t know why. Abrupt melancholy piled up in his throat, stealing words.   
  
“Come here,” Johnny said, and put arms around him, holding on.   
  
Astonished, he didn’t cry after all; he didn’t know why he didn’t, or why he had a lump in his throat in the first place, but Johnny didn’t ask him to talk, didn’t ask anything of him. Only kissed his forehead and rubbed his back and tangled their legs together.   
  
“You smell like smoke.” His nose had ended up squished into Johnny’s collarbone.   
  
“Yeah, well, didn’t exactly stop to shower.” Johnny rubbed small circles over his hip with a thumb. “I did put pants on. Wasn’t sure you’d appreciate me chasing after you in my underwear.”   
  
“I don’t know, might’ve been fun when you showed up at my door.” He rested fingers cautiously over the broad plane of Johnny’s back. “Do you get scared? Of the jumps. The fire. Like tonight.”   
  
“Tonight…yeah. I do. I let myself think about it for a minute, two minutes, before I shut it all off—what could happen, what if it goes wrong, how Sue and the family and—everybody—would feel…” Johnny sighed. “I don’t know about anybody else, but yeah. I get scared.”   
  
“But you still jump.”   
  
“But I still do it all. Because, hey—” Johnny put a finger under his chin, nudged it up: their eyes met. “I’m Johnny Storm, right? I’m the Human Torch. Little kids have action figures of me. Daredevil stunt rider and all. Sexy.”   
  
“Right. How could I forget.”   
  
“No, not like that. Yeah, I love the attention. I like the adrenaline. I know it’s dangerous. But it’s something I can do. I’m not a scientific genius like Sue or Reed, I washed out of test pilot training when Ben stayed in, and this—it’s not, like, ground-breaking life-saving research, I know, but—I can _do_ this. And the thing about the action figures—oh, hell, I’m sayin’ it all wrong, never mind.”   
  
“No,” TJ said. “You mean you inspire people. Celebrity. A role model.” And he might’ve been sarcastic, he wanted to be sarcastic, but his heart wouldn’t let him.   
  
“Okay,” Johnny said, “I know it sounds dumb, you don’t have to say it.”   
  
“That’s not what I was thinking.”   
  
Johnny let out an amused breath, but then really looked at TJ’s expression, and said, “Oh, okay, so you _are_ perfect, then, even with the pointy elbows.”   
  
TJ’s mouth fell open. Affronted pride; giddy hysterical laughter blooming deep inside.    
  
“Stay put,” Johnny said, and TJ stared at him and the order; Johnny came back with the Classic Coke and opened one for him—“Sugar!”—and put an arm around him and settled down into the bed, grabbing the television remote, flipping on classic cartoons as night poured in like lazy molasses outside.   
  
TJ let himself be cuddled, bemused and tasting rich sweetness on his tongue. Calories. Sugar. The heat of Johnny’s body tangled up with his. He yawned, not thinking much of anything, suddenly exhausted; Johnny’s hand found his hair, drew his head down to rest on a muscular thigh.    
  
He tried not to fall asleep, but did anyway, head in Johnny’s lap, drifting. He half-woke to find the television muted while an old Bugs Bunny episode played in the background; Johnny had carefully not moved an inch, but had managed to collect his phone and was tapping at the screen, irritated.   
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“Nothing. Go back to sleep, you looked happy.”   
  
“I did?”   
  
“You were smiling.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
“Can I use your laptop? Just for a sec. I didn’t bring anything.”   
  
“My—?”   
  
“In your bag?” Johnny waved at the floor. “I can see it.”   
  
“Oh…yeah, fine.” It was a two-week-old laptop, shiny and lightweight. He’d only brought it to answer some club-related email on the plane, issues he couldn’t delegate to a manager. Nothing incriminating on there except maybe some gay porn for boring campaign-strategy afternoon meetings, but Johnny Storm wouldn’t be bothered by that. “The password's ‘fuckoffdouglas’. One word, lowercase.”   
  
Johnny paused to glance at him.   
  
“My brother likes to try to read my email. I think he thinks I’m sending secret messages to crack dealers and high-class bisexual prostitutes.”    
  
Johnny snorted in amusement, which was gratifying, and leaned over the bed to fish out the laptop.   
  
“Of course I use my secret drug-addict prostitute-locating other laptop for that,” TJ said.   
  
Johnny burst out laughing, nearly dropped the computer, rescued it, dove over to kiss him. “Okay. I’ll be quick, I swear, just some Foundation shit. And then dinner. Don’t make a face at me. We both need food.”   
  
“I trust you,” TJ said, and then lay very still, naked and staring at nothing in particular, in utter shock.    
  
“Yeah,” Johnny said, hand coaxing him back into napping position, “I kinda chased you all the way here without stopping to think about anything except how much I wanted to see you, I don’t even have a toothbrush, I’m sort of naked here. Around you. Hey, you actually have a folder labeled ‘seriously gay porn,’ right on the desktop, I mean, I’m not even looking around, it’s right there, is it really, can I open it?”   
  
TJ, surrounded by warmth, said, “Sure.”   
  
“…wow. Huh. _Wow_.”   
  
“Told you.”   
  
“Nobody’s dick is that big!”   
  
“His is. Watch…a minute ahead. There.”   
  
“I feel inadequate. That—oh, come on, that’s not physically possible! That doesn’t _fit_ in there.”   
  
“If you’re creative it does. You’re not inadequate. You’re very…adequate.”   
  
Johnny closed the window.   
  
“Did I say adequate,” TJ said, “I meant you really were…it was…I felt…good.” He bit his lip, kicked at a stray fold of sheet with his toes. He knew he hadn’t said it right. How much that meant. Feeling good.   
  
But Johnny touched his lips, traced his mouth, with one fingertip: oddly intent, as if memorizing every curve, every plushness. “I feel good too. With you.”   
  
TJ blushed, to his own irritation.    
  
“Go back to sleep for a minute,” Johnny said, “I’ll just do this real fast and then wake you up for dinner and more sex, sound good?” and TJ laughed, somehow didn’t want to argue about food, at least not yet, and shut his eyes.

The next time he woke, with a crick in his neck and the foggy sensation that it’d been longer than a minute, Johnny was poking away at the keyboard and muttering dire imprecations under his breath; TJ, not entirely functional yet, yawned and curled lazily into Storm-heat. “Go back to sleep,” Johnny said without looking around, “I just need to sort this out…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You wouldn’t be interested, seriously. Totally boring. Fantastic Four Foundation stuff.”  
  
“Oh,” TJ said, “okay, yeah,” and rolled over to his other side, and tucked a hand under his cheek: harder than the pillow, and he could press the corner of his mouth into that hand and hold threatening emotion at bay.  
  
The bed rustled, jostled, wobbled. Johnny’s weight flopped down around him, big puppyish spoon with a laptop. “Here, if you want. You’re not gonna be interested, but hey, you asked. I’ve been doing the—”  
  
“Are those financial records? Quarterly projected expense reports?”  
  
“And now I’m getting the feeling I should pull my foot out of my mouth,” Johnny said. “So this is kind of a huge mess because, um, the Foundation had, well, used to have, a financial manager, a guy named Victor von Doom—”  
  
“With that kind of a name I expect you’re about to tell me he embezzled all your charity funds and ran away to Cuba.”  
  
“Close. Latveria. Where he originally came from.”  
  
“Oh my god you’re serious.”  
  
“—so we _look_ like we have money, but the Foundation’s been basically just surviving for the last year and a half, and to make it worse, I don’t know what he was doing but it wasn’t his job.” Johnny opened up a rat’s nest of spreadsheets. “I don’t even know where to start.”  
  
“Why are _you_ doing it?”  
  
“We’re broke, Reed’s hopeless with money, Sue says she shouldn’t have to do house- or book-keeping on principle, and Ben just laughed and threatened to clobber me if I brought it up again.”  
  
“What’s that one? No, that other one. That one marked ‘lab?’, with the question mark.”  
  
“Um…Reed’s personal expenditures? I think? His lab funding.”  
  
“He’s taking money out of the Foundation’s savings account? That can’t be right. Where’re your tax records? Disbursements? Employee reimbursement forms?”  
  
Johnny gave him a helpless sort of wide-eyed look.  
  
TJ scowled at the topmost spreadsheet. No. Those numbers didn’t even add properly. “What’s this fee? Account maintenance? Do you have a minimum account balance with penalties for running low?”  
  
“I…don’t know?”  
  
“Oh. Sorry. No, wait, what’s that one—oh, here, just let me,” TJ said, and took the laptop away. “These irregular deposits…was your Moron von Doom _trying_ to confuse—of course he was—oh, okay, that’s what _that_ is, so _this_ should be in _that_ column…what?”  
  
“Nothing. You.” Johnny balanced on an elbow, having placidly relinquished laptop duties. He was smiling, albeit in a surprised and wistful way. “You’re good at this.”  
  
“Better than you, anyway. Sorry, that was mean. But you’re not even naming files consistently…”  
  
This made Johnny grimace, entertained, self-disparaging. “Yeah, I can never remember, and I always think I’ll fix them later. This’s kinda hot.”  
  
“Your…file-naming system? Absolutely no, not at all, no. You should really hire someone to fix this for you. I think—if my math is right—you can afford it. Not a big name, but a new degree. Somebody young and eager.”  
  
“Can I hire you?”  
  
“No. Do you know what these are? These wire transfers.”  
  
“Where? Oh. Yeah…I’ve…been putting some of my money in. Y’know, like the fees I get from stunt shows and a couple product endorsements. Reed runs out of money a lot. _Why_ can’t I hire you?”  
  
“Family obligations, the fact that you’ve had your dick in my ass, the very valid point that I’ve never worked for a living, general unreliable uselessness. Johnny—” He set the laptop aside, very precisely. “You’re bleeding yourself dry for them.”  
  
Johnny’s smile went sideways, though his eyebrows didn’t seem happy, as they watched TJ’s face. “Family. Someone had to try to fix it.”  
  
“Right, yeah, probably even aliens from outer space can see how someone _should_ , but—”  
  
“But I’m not any good at it. But you are.”  
  
“I’m not really. It’s just numbers. Anyone can. Well. Maybe not you. Or the aliens. You should hire someone who’s not a poster boy for terrible choices, I can give you a couple of names—”  
  
“Don’t.” Johnny leaned in, interrupting. Eyes level, with a flare of blue-sky anger. “Don’t say shit like that. It’s not _true_.”  
  
“I thought you knew who I was,” TJ said.  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said. “Come here. Please.” He sounded sad, but he held out both arms, a hopeful gesture; I don’t want you to be sad, TJ thought, and without really making a conscious decision he slid back down onto the bed, lying face to face and hip to hip, and let Johnny’s arms close around him.  
  
Johnny’s chest felt broad and masculine and strong. Johnny’s heart beat steady and strong too; TJ rested his head against the sound and let it wash over him. One of Johnny’s big hands came up to pet his hair, to cradle the back of his skull, to hold him in place; the other started rubbing slow circles across his back.  
  
“So beautiful,” Johnny murmured, almost as if to himself. “And good at financial records, and good at makin’ me smile…good thing you can’t dance, or you’d be too perfect, I’d never have a chance…”  
  
He’d roll his eyes, but the cadence of Johnny’s voice felt soothing, and the hands felt good, petting him, keeping him still and safe. He felt drowsy, or he thought he did; it wasn’t like sleepiness exactly.  
  
“So good.” Johnny toyed with strands of hair, scratched fingertips lightly over his scalp. TJ’s body melted and yearned; he thought he might be falling asleep, or just falling, it felt like falling, except it also felt like being caught. Like he’d turned into a sunbeam, limbs full of glow.  
  
“And you don’t even know,” Johnny mused, “you don’t have any idea how good you are, how bright you are, how brave…god, the way you smile, when you smile at me, I just…want to make you feel good all over, because you deserve that, you do, because you’re so damn amazing…”  
  
TJ might’ve moaned faintly. The words’d stopped making sense; they flowed through him in a golden haze and left him dimly aware that he’d been good, that Johnny thought he’d been good, that Johnny thought he deserved this…  
  
He made another small sound, inadvertent. “Oh, you like that?” Johnny’s voice held a laugh, tinged with wonder. “Fuck, TJ—you’ve needed this, haven’t you? And you’re so good, so incredible, and I’m gonna take care of you, okay? You’re here with me and I’m so proud of you.”  
  
TJ, lying in strong arms, one of Johnny’s thighs pressing between his own, couldn’t think. He was dissolving, floating, drifting into some gilded sky where everything shone blue and bright as Johnny’s eyes. He felt good—something between his legs felt good—and he rocked up against it, against Johnny’s thigh, shameless, secure. Johnny would take care of him.  
  
“Yeah.” Johnny sounded breathless, now. “Oh, fuck, yeah—look at you, so sweet, so good, you’re so gorgeous, baby, don’t stop, keep going—”   
  
He whimpered, sobbed a little—not fear, not at all, but feeling too much, reverberations billowing back and forth between the lovely friction between his thighs and the weight of Johnny’s hand on his head. Dizzy, rapturous, delirious, he tumbled further into the heights.  
  
“So good,” Johnny whispered, “so good for me, come on, baby, let it out, let it go, you can, I want you to, I want you to let it go for me—”  
  
TJ’s whole body spilled peacefully into scattered pieces of light, thoughts empty. He felt his lips part, felt his balls draw up and tighten, but the sensation seemed oddly sweetly faraway, and the release swept through him and took him away, floating, into noiseless stars.  
  
He came back to himself some time later, incrementally, in soft-edged bits and pieces. He was lying along Johnny’s side. Johnny’s hand was stroking his hair, soft and unhurried. Johnny’s voice murmured, low and tranquil and indecipherable but soothing. TJ let himself float for another moment, letting go of awareness.  
  
He woke up more the second time, and figured out that his stomach was sticky and wet, his cock limp and spent amid sticky curls, and Johnny’s leg was wet and sticky too; and then he understood that his face felt damp, as if he’d been crying, and he shivered, amazed.  
  
“Hey.” Johnny’d kept petting him, but now sounded proud and happy and a little concerned. “You back with me?”  
  
No, TJ tried to say, I’ve turned into an alien, oops, sorry; but his mouth had other ideas. “Mmm.”  
  
“Not up to talking?”  
  
Evidently not. His limbs felt uncoordinated, languid, heavy: like being weighed down by cotton candy, delicious and sugar-spun and cloudy.  
  
“Hmm,” Johnny said. “TJ? Can you look at me?”  
  
He flinched the first time—too bright somehow, like Johnny’d somehow begun shimmering, ringed around with halos—but managed, with a hand at his cheek for support. He blinked. “You…”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“I…should I…” His tongue had gone clumsy. “For you? Your turn.”  
  
“Oh.” Johnny laughed briefly, half embarrassed. “No. I mean—I sort of, um. Watching you.”  
  
“What?” He blinked again. Focused on Johnny’s lap. On Johnny’s…very decidedly post-climax, softening, wet-tipped cock. “You…really?”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said. “You seriously—you don’t know how beautiful you are? How—that was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, the way you—for me, just me talking to you, and you just—wow. I mean, wow. You. Thank you.”  
  
“…for what?”  
  
“For…” Johnny laughed again, now more embarrassed; glanced away and back, with startling transparency. “Letting me see you.”  
  
“Oh…well…” That couldn’t be right; that couldn’t be—hell, he’d not even reciprocated, he’d not offered any of his best skills in bed; but Johnny Storm seemed to mean every word, and his body felt too contented to fret. “Wish I’d seen _you_.”  
  
“Next time.”  
  
“What…” He waved a clumsy hand. “What did you _do_ to me, anyway, I can’t even…talk…I feel all…sparkly.”  
  
“Um.” Johnny put fingers under his chin, nudged his face up, peeked at his eyes. “Know anything about BDSM?”  
  
“Like whips and chains and…um…” His imagination ran out. “Handcuffs?”  
  
“Maybe. Sometimes. But—”  
  
“ _You_ know things about BDSM. Johnny Storm.” He kind of wanted to giggle, and then he wanted to cry, and then he felt extremely confused and stopped trying to categorize feelings.  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said, “shut up for a second. I’m trying to make sure you’re okay, aftercare is a thing, are you cold? Hungry? Thirsty?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Johnny swore, very quietly. “Okay. Come on, sit up, I’m gonna get you water. Still feeling sparkly?”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“Your word, not mine. Don’t move, I’ll be right back—”  
  
In the minute of Johnny’s sprint to the mini-fridge, TJ tried to move his hand again. Couldn’t. Too heavy. He rolled his head that way. He could see Johnny, but he couldn’t touch Johnny, and that felt—weird, wrong, empty—  
  
“Jesus I’m a fucking idiot. Here.” Johnny’s hands helped him sit up enough to sip water, and held the water too. TJ blinked, drifted out and in, and realized he’d polished off half the bottle; the coldness helped clear away some of the haze. He managed, “What happened?”  
  
“You went pretty far under.” Johnny touched his lips, used a thumb to swipe a stray water-droplet away. “I didn’t—I thought you’d feel good but I didn’t think—I’m so damn stupid, I could’ve hurt you really fucking bad, I’m so sorry—”  
  
“You didn’t hurt me.” He was very sure of that. “I feel…good, I think. Tired. But lighter. But more anchored down. Like…I don’t know. But what did you _do_?”  
  
Johnny breathed out. Looked searchingly into his eyes; TJ tried to radiate an _I’m okay, really, the cotton-candy fluff is kind of nice_ right back, and it must’ve worked well enough; Johnny heaved out a sigh and plopped down beside him and cuddled him into protective arms.   
  
“Okay. So…I’m not even the most experienced, actually, like, not much at all, which is why I didn’t think—so you know I kinda. Um. Slept with a lot of people. Before.”  
  
Past tense. Before. “Yeah.”  
  
“A couple of them, especially this one girl, they were into the BDSM scene, she liked to, um, tie me up and pet me and play with me, and it was fun, I mean, I enjoyed it, but I kept wondering…what it’d be like on the other end, taking care of someone like that, and I wanted to try, and the thought was—I mean, as if anyone'd trust me with that, like that, I mean, me—but then you just kinda…I kept talking and you, um, it’s called a praise kink, that one?” Johnny was blushing. They’d made Johnny Storm blush. “I didn’t think you’d get that far under. I never thought—I barely know what I’m doing.”  
  
“That’s a thing? What you did. Talking.”  
  
“Oh god,” Johnny said, and scrubbed hands over his face. Kept them there. “I just introduced TJ Hammond to BDSM play.”  
  
“I’m still me,” TJ said. “You don’t actually have to use the last name.”  
  
“The president’s kid.”  
  
“I liked what you did. I—” He felt Johnny’s last words thud home. He felt himself pull away. He didn’t mean to, but he did. “Does that matter?” He thought: I thought it didn’t matter. I thought maybe you—   
  
No. It always mattered.   
  
He said, “You can stay, I’ll get a different room, you can even keep the laptop,” and wondered where his pants’d ended up. Ah. There.  
  
“What?” Johnny’s voice was too loud: surprise, not anger. “TJ—wait, what—don’t get _up_ —ah, fuck—TJ, sit _down_.” That voice. Johnny’s hand at the back of his neck. Johnny’s other hand around his left wrist. TJ’s knees gave way. So did his emotions.  
  
“Dammit,” Johnny muttered, and held him while he cried: held him and told him it wasn’t his fault, it had to do with the aftermath and brain chemistry and intensity, and Johnny wasn’t angry with him, would never be angry with him, not for this. “It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. Shh, you’re okay, I’ve got you, you’re safe, I’m not mad, I swear. You were good, you _are_ good, baby, you’re great, you’re incredible, okay?”  
  
TJ blinked back tears. Emotions again. Inexplicably everyplace. “…’m not.”  
  
“Yeah, you are.” Johnny sighed. “I just meant I was kinda…it sort of all hit me over the head, what we were doing, y’know? Who we both are. But I like it. I liked it when you…when I could give that to you. I like taking care of you. Making you feel good. That feels good for me. Does that…is that something you want? Maybe?”  
  
TJ swallowed, swiped a hand over his face, wobbled out, “Not a fair question right now…sir? Is that…right?”  
  
Johnny stared at him, said, “I—you—oh fuck—oh god that was a joke, right, you were kidding? Jesus, TJ. Okay. You’re okay?”  
  
“Yeah. I think so. Two-thirds a joke, maybe. I don’t know. Yeah, I…” He ducked his head, peeked up at Johnny through wet eyelashes: shaky, shy, honest like his heart’d been pulled out through his bones and put on display. “This felt good. I mean, not the weird whatever that was just now, but what you did…taking care of me…and right after. I like the way that feels.”  
  
“Just now…” Johnny made a face, but it was a face tinged with reverence, gazing at him. “That was my fault. It’s a thing that happens. You can get pretty bad drops after a scene. And I said the wrong thing, and you were still in that headspace, and I’m sorry, I really am, that’s on me. I want you because you’re you. Because you came to California for me. Because you danced with me when I asked. Can I take care of you now? For the rest of tonight?”  
  
“Um,” TJ said, “…yeah? I mean, I guess? What does that mean?” He waved a hand. “What do you…want to do? With me?”  
  
Johnny laughed, relief tinting the sound gold and a little guilty. “Everything you’ll let me try. Um. Right now, though…can I…give you a bath?”  
  
“…you’re serious.”  
  
“Yeah. Come on.”  
  
“Well,” TJ said, “okay, sir,” and tried to get up and come with Johnny to the bathroom. His legs kept trying to fold themselves up and trip over tables and bed-corners and discarded boxer-shorts. Johnny finally scooped him up in both arms, bridal-style, and decided, “The sir thing kind of sounds weird, but if you’re going to be that sarcastic when you say it, okay, fine.”  
  
TJ glared, couldn’t think of a witty comeback, punched him weakly in the bicep. “Put me _down_.”  
  
“We’re here anyway.” Johnny steadied him with a hand, turned on the tap, let the tub fill. The bathroom shone big and luxurious, cream-hued and serene as buttercups. Because it was California, palm-tree art watched them from the walls, etched in tile curiosity. TJ sat on the side of the tub, trailed fingers through hot water.   
  
Johnny wanted to bathe him. That…sounded like something he hadn’t done since childhood. But it also kind of sounded nice. Being warm, being cared for, letting Johnny’s hands wash away fear and sweat and old battered armor, leaving him clean and fresh and new…  
  
He flicked fingers through the water. It leapt merrily upward. Happy.  
  
Johnny held his hands, got him into the tub, perched on the side. The same spot TJ’d been sitting. Water lapped up, surrounding him; he breathed steam and Johnny’s nearness. Johnny touched his face, cupped his cheek, traced tear-marks with a quiet finger. TJ tipped his head up, not looking away.  
  
I trust you, he’d said. He meant it.  
  
Johnny bent and kissed him on the lips.  
  
TJ shivered as the kiss rang all the way through him: clear as a cathedral bell, radiant as devotion.  
  
Johnny produced soap—a sweet lemongrass scent—and lavished attention on his body. Big hands lifted his arms, moved him, arranged his limbs when Johnny wanted each one. Gentle caresses, cleaning skin. Along forearms, along calves, up his thighs.   
  
His mind gradually stopped consciously processing, somewhere in the middle; he let Johnny take care of everything, gave control of his own body over to those sweet authoritative touches. The shimmery floating feeling came back: not like an orgasm, nothing so pointed, but more diffuse. He dissolved into it like sugar. Johnny’s hands kneaded his hair, tipped his head back, poured water through silky strands. TJ’s breath caught, taken by rapture.  
  
He didn’t think he was asleep, but he lost some time; he remembered snatches of getting out of the tub, being bundled into an enormous towel, being brought back to bed and kept warm and fed…bananas? Chocolate? Sweetness; he remembered that, nibbled out of Johnny’s fingertips as they held tidbits to his mouth. Johnny kissed him after the food, like dessert.  
  
Johnny talked to him constantly. Low-voiced assurances, words of praise, assertions of how good he was, how beautiful, how amazing, letting Johnny do this. TJ wanted to argue a little with that last one, but couldn’t, because he’d dissolved into honeyed waves.  
  
Johnny kept talking to him, and TJ actually did fall asleep for a while, and woke up lying in Johnny Storm’s arms in the middle of their hotel bed, naked under a mountain of blankets and not cold at all.   
  
“Hey.” Johnny interrupted his own sentence to drop a kiss on TJ’s nose. “Back with me?”  
  
“I…yeah.” Talking. He could talk. Every atom felt drained but paradoxically buoyant, like he’d run a marathon and won. “What time is it?”  
  
“About eight am. You needed the rest. How’re you feeling?” Blue eyes searched his. “Still under?”  
  
“No…I think I’m awake…or back…or whatever your word is. Did you…feed me?”  
  
“I did say I wanted to take care of you. Nothing big, though. If you haven’t been eating—I didn’t want to push you. I thought—”  
  
“Did _you_ eat? After your event. Show. Performance. You should eat.”  
  
“Me? I’m fine, I got a cheeseburger, I called for room service. I, um. Sort of forgot my wallet. I might’ve charged it to your room. Are you feeling okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” TJ said, and put a hand over his own mouth, and laughed through fingers, and shut his eyes and opened them to find Johnny’s waiting. “Yeah. I’m okay.”  
  
And Johnny’s smile lit up the room.  
  
And TJ held his hand, and sat up in bed drinking hotel-brand instant coffee with cream and sugar because Johnny made it for him, because Johnny Storm smiling made TJ Hammond want to smile.  
  
“So I should go,” Johnny said, though not until after the coffee, after caffeine-flavored morning kisses. “I’m saying should because I don’t want to. But I have to be in Las Vegas tonight. Second show. When do I get to see you again?”  
  
As soon as you want, TJ thought. Whenever you want. But that was dangerous. And just because Johnny Storm had given him something that he’d never known—had made him feel emotions he couldn’t remember ever feeling—just because—  
  
He knew he got addicted easily. He _knew_. “When…when would you—I don’t know.”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said, just that, and stubborn resistance crumbled. “Can we—can we do this again?”  
  
“Yeah.” Johnny lifted his hand, kissed it, rested it against his cheek for a pair of heartbeats. “I’d like that. Hey, will you be around next week? Tuesday. Not this Tuesday, in like two days, but the next one.”  
  
“Probably?” He was distracted. Johnny was pulling on jeans. “I mean. Where?”  
  
“Well—I have to be in New York. Talk show interview thing. But I could come through D.C. on the way. Or after. Or both. Would both work?”  
  
“Come over,” TJ said. “My apartment.”   
  
Johnny, halfway through his shirt, beamed as if he’d been given all the first prizes in the world. “I get your address?”  
  
“And phone number.”  
  
“Today is the best day _ever_.” Johnny conquered the shirt, yanked on boots. Crossed back to TJ’s side and put both hands in his hair and kissed him soundly. Then hesitated. “Can I…send you…some links? I mean…about…”  
  
“About what we did? What you did with me?” TJ put his head on one side, licked lips: unabashedly sensual and loving the way Johnny regarded him for it. His skin tingled with new awareness. While Johnny’d been clothed for this most recent scorching kiss, he’d stayed naked, and that contrast impressed itself into his being like a solemn-yet-shining permanent seal. “Yeah. I want to know.”  
  
“Yeah, you should, ’cause like I said I’m not very experienced and I’m gonna fuck this up and hurt you again and—”  
  
“I want to know so we can _try_ some of it. When you come over. At…my place.”  
  
“You’re fucking _perfect_ ,” Johnny said.   
  
“Stop—” TJ laughed, gave up: “Go. You have to be in Las Vegas. Speaking of time.”  
  
“Time—oh shit—” Johnny swooped in for another kiss that landed half on and half off TJ’s mouth, heady and swift. “I’ll call you. What time’s your flight back to D.C.?”  
  
“Ten pm tonight. I’ll watch you on television once I’m home. And pine romantically over your distant image.”  
  
“There’s a joke there,” Johnny said, “about pine, and wood,” and wiggled eyebrows lasciviously; and TJ was laughing when they finally parted, laughing even as Johnny ran out the door.  
  
Still naked, he wandered back to the bed. Fell onto it. Was hugged by sheets. They felt warm.  
  
He spotted his cellphone. It lounged untouched on the left side table, waiting to be remembered; he stretched out an arm, feeling vaguely guilty, and scooped it up.  
  
Texts. From Douglas. Of course.   
  
The oldest one said _Why the hell are you in California?_ This was followed by _Johnny Storm, right? Johnny Storm,_ which was followed by, _What the fuck, TJ,_ which was followed by _You know I can’t drop everything to come pick you up on the other side of the country right now,_ plus _Also you need to have your grey suit fitted if you’re wearing it for Mom’s acceptance speech in two weeks._  
  
Some twins, TJ recalled hearing, had a mysterious empathic mystical bond. They could sense each other’s hurts and fears and happinesses.   
  
Doug’s final text said _No one has time for this. Call me so I know you’re alive and I can NOT get on a plane for California, please._  
  
Johnny Storm, he thought, phone a heavy weight across his palm. Johnny’s smile.  
  
Of course Douglas assumed it’d end badly. Of course that was an assumption as well: that anything existed that might be brought _to_ an end.  
  
Spectacular sex. Unparalleled sex. Feeling…good. He liked the way Johnny made him feel. He wanted to feel that more. He wanted to try more, to do more.  
  
But that was all. No one’d said any other words. Seeing each other again, hook-ups, sure; he did believe Johnny’d had fun too. Johnny _wanted_ to see him more. Johnny meant well and did not want to hurt him; he also believed that, though he found himself surprised that he did believe it, so strongly.   
  
But. Regardless. No expectations. No promises. Not even a relationship. Nobody in love with anybody.  
  
Love?  
  
He resolutely ignored the fact that he’d thought the word. Just a word. Turn of phrase.  
  
He texted Douglas: _I’m alive, I’ll be home tonight, I’ll take care of the suit tomorrow, thank you for caring so deeply about my fashion choices_ ; and then shut his eyes, phone in hand, lying on his back facing the ceiling. Sunlight snuck thin bone-white fingers around the edges of curtain-drapes over the window.  
  
If he stayed still enough maybe everything would also stay still. Fragility unbroken. Not an ending. The sheets had ceased to hold any traces of Johnny’s heat. Entropy: the universe winding down to a cold and lonely grave, and his bare skin felt chilly and faintly ridiculous now.  
  
He sat up. He threw on clothing. He packed away laptop and lube and condoms. He stopped with an unopened condom in his hand. The coffee cup, the empty one that’d held morning caffeine and sugar, the one Johnny’d put together for him, was sitting on the table.  
  
He sat down on the corner of the unmade bed, and stared at it.  
  
He’d invited Johnny over. To his apartment. Johnny’d said yes.  
  
He thought: I barely even have furniture, I threw it all out, I don’t have coffee, I need to buy coffee, he likes Classic Coke and sugar, I should buy things with sugar, I should buy a new couch, oh fuck I’ve got a lot to do before next Tuesday, before Johnny—  
  
And he dove for his cellphone and set about trying to pull certain strings and switch flights last-minute, because a ten o’clock plane would be too late, because he needed to be home earlier, because Johnny Storm would be coming over and even a week would not be enough time to make his hollowed-out space perfect for that smile; not that he wasn’t going to try, because he _did_ know something about style, and for Johnny—  
  
This was a thing he _wanted_ to do.  
 


	4. with no fortune save his trusty heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which TJ buys a bed, and phone calls happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the first half of the NEXT chapter for a really long time, but that would've been a horrendously lengthy chapter, plus I thought we could use more fluff before the ouch. So here you go.
> 
> Title and chapter title, as ever, courtesy of Gilbert and Sullivan's _H.M.S. Pinafore._
> 
>  **Warnings for** discussion of TJ's past addiction and suicide attempt, nothing explicit, in the context of him telling Johnny about it.

TJ Hammond bought a bed.  
  
He’d already had a bed, and a new sofa. But he didn’t like them; he’d just picked the first options in a catalogue to fill empty spaces.  
  
He wanted something that Johnny Storm might like.  
  
He wanted something that he might want to show to Johnny Storm, as his furniture.  
  
Those were two different wants; he thought about that for a minute. And then he bought a bed.  
  
The bed was not historic in any way, and it was tall and wide and made of dark wood, neither brown nor black. It had four bedposts because he liked the way they looked, elegant sparse squared-off columns. They’d make the spots under high ceilings less lonely.  
  
He bought a sofa too. It matched. He was rather surprised to discover that, all sarcasm about gay fashion aside, he did have a sense of style.  
  
Johnny, true to his word, sent certain links. He sent them the day after his glorious arena-crossing leap in a Las Vegas motocross stadium, where thousands of fans cheered the daredevil Human Torch live and many more, including one person alone in a D.C. apartment, watched on television with heart pounding. TJ didn’t reply immediately. Opened the first one up instead and eyed it, on the laptop Johnny’d borrowed in a California hotel room.  
  
Some of the contents made instant sense. Some required a pause. Some required further research.  
  
He found what Johnny’d called praise kink, which was a yes. Definitely. He liked that. Also hair-petting. Probably hair-pulling. Marks and claiming and possessive behavior. Being cared for and indulged and cherished; bathing, washing, hand-feeding, all yes.  
  
He wasn’t too sure about pain. He didn’t think he was a masochist; he liked sensation but he also liked his own comfort.  
  
Almost certainly no to gags and whips and leather, then. He couldn’t quite picture big earnest Johnny Storm with a bullwhip in any case. No to a few more elaborate toys that he couldn’t even manage to picture, reading descriptions. At least not until he could figure out a hell of a lot more about them.  
  
He also wasn’t sure about labels. He thought, submissive; and then he thought, maybe; and then he thought that maybe for now he could just go with thinking that some things felt good and that would be enough.  
  
He thought about Johnny’s hands.  
  
Spanking? Another maybe. He sat on his brand-new bed, surrounded by curious brand-new four-poster wooden eyes. The evening hung hot and muggy, sunset in the swirl of Washington. Honeyed light spilled through his window, across his toes.  
  
He’d had partners playfully smack his ass a time or two; he could be a precious brat in bed if that dynamic seemed to work. He didn’t like the idea of Johnny hurting him and he didn’t like the idea of Johnny being angry with him. But lightly scolding him, teasing him—maybe.  
  
Keeping him intimate and close, naked across Johnny’s lap, Johnny’s hand on his bare skin—maybe.  
  
He spread his legs, half unconsciously. Dropped a hand to rub idly at his cock as it stirred.  
  
He could belong to Johnny. He could belong.  
  
He cupped his cock, through his jeans; he felt himself grow harder, felt his hand caressing the shaft, palm rubbing over the head. His breath caught, fluttering in his throat.  
  
A collar, he read, and then he sat very still and thought nothing at all for a second, while the idea shaped itself inside his head; and his hand sped up. Dampness spread at the tip, oddly pleasurable despite the chafe of wet denim. Rough and wonderful. Dreadful and awesome.  
  
He couldn’t put the formal name to the want. Not yet. But he could see it. A collar, a leash, Johnny leading him, Johnny making him crawl—  
  
Johnny stopping, looking down at him, being proud of him for obeying so well—  
  
A whimper escaped his throat. He shuddered, worked the hand faster, heard Johnny’s voice in memory telling him he’d been _so good_ —  
  
He came sudden and white-hot as a thunderclap, a burst of lightning through every nerve ending and every pulse-point. He lay collapsed across his bed after, damp and sticky in humid D.C. heat, and realized vaguely that he’d come in his pants, come all over himself, at the thought of kneeling leashed and collared and praised at Johnny Storm’s feet.  
  
Okay, he thought. So that’s a thing I like now.  
  
And he laughed, very softly, under the sunset glow; he put the other hand across his mouth to hold in the sound, and wondered why, and then moved the hand and lay there smiling quizzically at the ceiling for a while, until the wet jeans got terrible and the hot shower called.  
  
In the morning he decided he could probably use some art or decoration or interesting-person addition to mostly-blank walls, and went shopping again.  
  
He’d headed to an actual furniture store in the first place mostly out of rebellion; he could have anything under the sun delivered, but he liked the idea of wandering through side tables and ottomans, one among many domestically-minded consumers, unrecognized. He touched a lamp, a dresser, the rough texture of a rag-woven rug. He smiled at the floor model of his recently-purchased bed.  
  
One of the back showrooms had a piano. The room’d been designed as a formal living area, giving customers ideas about wealth and luxury; the piano was small and sadly out of tune, though, and someone’d pushed it back to the side, and a leg wobbled when he rested a hand on it.  
  
“Kids,” the salesperson announced, coming over. “They mess with stuff. Look, this one doesn’t play right, I just thought it might help sell the concept of the room, you know? But if you’re looking for a piano—”  
  
“I like it,” TJ said.  
  
“—then I’d be happy to sell you this one,” the salesperson finished. “Can we throw it in?”  
  
He took his piano home. He spent the night avoiding it. He got up the next morning, thought: oh this is ridiculous, I bought the thing, I might as well— and sat down with it and tinkered.  
  
He forgot to eat breakfast.  
  
After a while his sponsor called. “Can I send you some zucchini? They’re multiplying.”  
  
“It’s your own fault for indulging them,” TJ said. “What would I do with a—you know, I can actually think of something but you won’t like it.”  
  
“You’re terrifying,” Don informed him conversationally, “and I’m never letting you near my garden produce. How’s everything?”  
  
“I bought a piano,” TJ said, sitting on the bench, gazing at it. He’d got it more or less in tune, but hadn’t done anything yet about the wobbly leg. It didn’t seem to mind. It seemed happy to be paid some attention, at least, so far.  
  
“You felt like buying a piano,” Don said. Don knew he’d used to play; TJ’d admitted once, one frighteningly thin-ice night early on, that he was afraid to find out the yes or no to the question of present tense. “Want to tell me why you bought a piano?” His sponsor-voice suggested that if TJ’s family had played the guilt-trip card about social contribution, someone was going to have words and possibly angry middle-aged cane-waving directed at the Hammond clan.  
  
“I saw it,” TJ said, “so no reason really. I just…think I wanted it. I mean, I also bought a sofa.”  
  
“Redecorating?”  
  
“It’s something to do.” And there was a pause, while two ex-addicts thought about the vital necessity of having something to do.  
  
“Anyway he might be coming over,” TJ admitted.  
  
“Your California person? You sound happy about that.”  
  
“I am,” TJ said, surprised that the smile’d been audible; and then he said, “Yeah, you got me to say I feel happy, congratulations.”  
  
“Congratulations to you, I think,” Don said.  
  
“So I won’t need the company of your zucchini.” Easier than accepting the congratulations. Easier than believing he could have succeeded, could have found stable ground and warm caresses, could have won. “In my new bed.”  
  
“Sometimes I wonder why I call you,” Don sighed. “And then I remember that I—”  
  
“You’re responsible for my clean bill of health. I know.” He poked the wobbly piano-leg with a sock-clad toe. The wood wiggled sympathetically but couldn’t help. His toes felt cold even through the socks.  
  
“I actually like you, was what I was going to say,” his sponsor grumbled. “Try not to put words in my mouth, kid. California, though, he good to you? Perfect gentleman?”  
  
Johnny had made him shiver with arousal and float with bliss and climax with toe-curling force; Johnny had smiled at him as if he were brilliant when faced with financial quandaries to solve, and Johnny had kissed him on the way out the door. TJ came up with, for the phone, “He’s good at talking.”  
  
That wasn’t enough, wouldn’t ever be enough for Johnny Storm. But it was a piece.  
  
His toes felt warmer, inexplicably. He petted the piano-leg with them.  
  
“Talking is good. Anything you want to share? I’m also good at talking.”  
  
“Not in the same way. And no, thanks.”  
  
“Also try,” Don added, continuing the earlier thought, “not putting words in _anyone’s_ mouth. You think you know what we think about you. People might surprise you.”  
  
TJ thought: Johnny told me not to say things like that, too. And he told me he’d hire me to fix his family foundation’s problems. Even after I told him he should know who I am. “…maybe.”  
  
“Well. More than I was expecting. You sure you’re okay?”  
  
“I haven’t tried playing yet. The piano.”  
  
“Hey,” Don said, “one step at a time, one day at a time,” and offered to send him some home-grown chamomile and mint leaves for tea, on the grounds that even TJ couldn’t think of anything sexual to do with leafy bits of plant matter.  
  
“Don’t be too sure about that,” TJ said, “I’ll find you some dryad-related erotica,” and then hung up without saying goodbye, which was fine, because Don was used to that.  
  
He went out to pick up his newly-tailored grey suit. They’d made it fit his current thinness flawlessly, classic uncontroversial lines disguising insubstantial contents. He looked good in it, respectable as a president’s son should be. He smiled at himself in the dressing-room mirror and bought a new tie because he couldn’t wear last season’s. Not to his mother’s celebratory nomination event.  
  
He came home and put the suit in his closet and shut the door on it.  
  
He turned and saw his new bed, the bed he’d christened with thoughts of Johnny Storm’s hands and the links Johnny’d sent him.  
  
He remembered, suddenly, that he was hungry, and he should eat lunch, and he didn’t have much food in the apartment: Chinese take-out from last week and a package of Oreos and something unidentifiable in the back of the fridge. But he wanted flavor and texture and weight; he wanted savory and calorie-rich and tangible and possibly covered in cheese.  
  
He ordered pizza.  
  
He finished the first slice, wondered where it’d gone, and picked up a second one, and got pizza-grease on his fingers and sauce on his cheek. He figured out that the cheap paper napkins delivered along with his pizza did no good at all, and he glanced around his kitchen, pizza-box open on the counter, afternoon sunshine painting the lid gold.  
  
His phone rang.  
  
He flailed, flung down a half-eaten slice of cheese and pepperoni, made a dive for a dishtowel, cringed at tomato-sauce spots. “Hello?”  
  
“Hey.” Johnny’s voice. Oh, Johnny’s voice; and TJ Hammond, standing in his kitchen with pizza-grease fingertips and a phone precariously balanced between shoulder and ear, could listen to him forever. “You busy? You kinda sound—”  
  
“I’m not busy! I was eating. Lunch. Ah…” He stuck hands under the sink faucet. Dried them off, grabbed the phone. “Pizza. Sorry.”  
  
“I like knowing you’re eating.”  
  
TJ’s knees got unfairly weak at this approval.  
  
“Also, you got pizza without me? Come on, not fair, you’ll just have to buy more.”  
  
“When you get here. On Tuesday. What time on Tuesday?”  
  
“Morning? My flight gets in around ten am. And then Wednesday morning I have to head to New York for the interview. But you’ve got me all to yourself Tuesday. We can totally have a pizza party. Naked pizza party.”  
  
TJ, after a second of deliberation, opted for, “Saucy,” and listened to Johnny laugh. “How do you feel about pineapple?”  
  
“Like, in bed?”  
  
“On pizza, possibly being eaten in bed. Yes or no?”  
  
“Um…yes. Better if I can cover it in bacon. Or if I get to eat it off of you. Did I pass?”  
  
“Narrowly. I like pineapple. Where are you?”  
  
“Texas. Houston. Which is in Texas. Next show tomorrow. And tonight I get to be a guest judge at a barbecue contest.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I like barbecue and a very nice lady from the Food Network asked me to?”  
  
“I don’t talk to you for, what, three days,” TJ said, “and you run off to eat a nice Food Network lady’s barbecue.”  
  
“She said they’d pay me for my time, and she was holding a pen made out of the horn of a cow.”  
  
“In that case you clearly had no choice. What’re you doing tomorrow?”  
  
“Nothing I haven’t done before.” TJ could picture him: casual athlete’s grace, sprawled in a chair, legs spread, head tipped back. “Nothing complicated. Mostly trick jumps and a distance thing. Not record-breaking. Texas likes big, though, so I’m gonna show off.”  
  
“So very difficult for you. Just—”  
  
“Hey, I’m worth showing off. Just what?”  
  
“I…was…going to say something that made me sound like your mother. Never mind.” And then he said it anyway: “Be careful.”  
  
“TJ—”  
  
“I’d miss your enormous cock.”  
  
“That’s right,” Johnny said, “you love me for my body,” and then hastily skittered past the multiple double-sided landmines in that joke. “Speaking of, did you get the links I sent you?”  
  
“The kitten videos?”  
  
“He really likes boxes, and he’s adorable, and no, the other stuff. About—”  
  
“Yeah. I’ve been…reading.” The pizza smirked knowingly. This was unfair. It hadn’t even been present for that scene. TJ closed the lid on it.  
  
“So…what’d you think?” Not subtle, but then Johnny never would be. Not in that buoyant nature.  
  
“I think…” TJ said. “I think we should try it.”  
  
“Wow,” Johnny said. “Like…all of it?”  
  
“Oh god no. For one thing, public humiliation’s definitely out.” He left the pizza, wandered through the apartment toward his bed. “Also sex clubs, cameras, and anything I can’t discreetly wear under clothing to White House functions.”  
  
“TJ.” Johnny was probably shaking his head a little, laughing on the other end. “Most people’d be a lot more freaked out by this. I mean, we sort of just met, and you—”  
  
“I’m not most people. And you want to.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Yeah.” He flopped down across his bed, and then decided to roll sideways because his stomach felt full and content and all of him felt unexpectedly honest. “I do. Besides, if you believe those rumors, there’s not much corrupting left you can do.”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said again, half-admonishing. “Look, I want to try, yeah. But not if you’re just doing it for me.”  
  
“I’m doing it for me. I’m extremely selfish like that. Ask anyone. Especially my family.”  
  
“No you’re not,” Johnny snapped, fairly crackling with outrage now. “Not the guy I know. And I’ll make that a fucking order if you were serious just now. Be honest. Why are you doing this?”  
  
TJ whispered, “For us.”  
  
“For—”  
  
“Because it felt good. With you. I don’t know if I’d do it without you. But I liked what you did. Can we start there?”  
  
Johnny started a word, a syllable; stopped, tried again. “Yeah. That—yeah, we can. Start there.”  
  
“I looked at those checklists. I liked some of it. I…think I didn’t like some of it.”  
  
“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.” Johnny paused again. “Look at me, being the mature one. Kinda weird.”  
  
TJ licked his lips. Noted, half innuendo and half some other unnamed emotion, “You said you’d take care of me.”  
  
“And I will. I’m just…gonna…sort of have to figure out how? As we go? Which I totally can.”  
  
“Because you’re that amazing. Johnny Storm.”  
  
“Because you deserve that. So, I guess—tell me what things you don’t like? Or should we talk about safewords first?”  
  
“What the fuck ’re you planning to _do_ to me on Tuesday?—yes, fine, um, I don’t know. Chamomile.”  
  
“Like tea?”  
  
“Don’t ask.” He’d certainly get pulled out of a scene, and a reminder of Don’s voice might be grounding. “And the whole, green, yellow, red, for checking in? Do you get a safeword too? I feel like you should.”  
  
“Huh,” Johnny said, thoughtful. “Okay. Can I use a phrase? Like, flame off?”  
  
“You can,” TJ said, “but what the hell does that even mean?”  
  
“Um…when I first started the pyrotechnic stunts I used to yell this thing, ‘Flame on!’ at the beginning, like, come light me on fire, let’s do this…so I stopped because I’m not nineteen anymore, but it’s something I’ll remember, and I’m gonna stop talking before you figure out how much of a moron I am, thanks.”  
  
“Flame on,” TJ said, giving up and snickering. “And I said I’d let you dominate me. Incredible.”  
  
“Stop that,” Johnny said, laughing too, “you agreed. To me. So there.”  
  
“So there? You win, sir, compelling argument.” He still felt like laughing. Like his bones had gotten lighter, full of readiness to smile. “You said I could say it if I was sarcastic, remember?”  
  
“Fuck yeah,” Johnny said cheerfully. “I wasn’t done, though, you got us sidetracked. Tell me what you don’t want to try, so I know.”  
  
“Probably not big on pain,” TJ said, rolling to his back, stretching a leg idly. He was imagining Johnny atop him. Couldn’t help it. “Hedonist and all.”  
  
“Hadn’t noticed. Not sure I’d want to anyway. I don’t want to hurt you. Any pain at all off the table, or how do you feel about, like, spanking?”  
  
“Spanking could be…good. Maybe, y’know, small stuff. Like that. I know I like having my nipples played with. Like, sort of rough. Are you taking _notes?_ ”  
  
The scratch of pen broke off guiltily. “Yeah?”  
  
“Where are you?” This was abruptly a pertinent question.  
  
“My hotel room. In Houston. Alone, and I’m not putting your name on this or anything, I just don’t want to forget something if I go shopping, don’t worry.”  
  
“I’m not,” TJ lied promptly. “Wondering if you were naked.”  
  
“Not yet, and you were. What else?”  
  
“Things I like?”  
  
“Things you don’t like. Or don’t want to try. Details. So I know.”  
  
“I…maybe…but that’s such a basic sort of…no, I’m good, you can go with that.”  
  
“TJ, come on.”  
  
“It’s practically the first thing on the first checklist. It’s stupid.”  
  
“So tell me.” Utterly calm, making this offer. Utterly in control. “I want to know.”  
  
“It’s just—but I could…” Old bravado firmly in place. “I can handle anything you want.”  
  
“TJ.”  
  
“Restraints,” TJ said, half-desperate, sudden and near-wild. “Being tied down. I don’t—I’m not sure—I think I’d think of—when I, fuck, in the hospital, the first time, after—Sean—after—when I woke up my wrists were strapped down and I couldn’t move, they thought I’d try again, they said I was a—at risk for—I don’t think I can, I’m sorry.”  
  
Johnny swore. Low and angry and vehement.  
  
TJ yanked his phone away from his ear, stabbed a finger at the End Call button, flung the whole disaster somewhere atop his new pillows, and panicked.  
  
Pounding heartbeat. Rattling breaths. Walls closing in. The entire book of clichés.  
  
He thought he might be sick. He regretted the pizza.  
  
He couldn’t seem to focus. He slid out of the bed, huddled on the floor, put his head between his knees; tried to focus on breathing techniques, coping rhythms, the memory of his sponsor’s voice.  
  
His phone shrilled loudly from between pillowcases. He barely heard it.  
  
He’d thought Johnny knew. Of course Johnny knew. Johnny wasn’t a politician, but the world thrived on gossip; spun-sugar stories only ever stretched so far before becoming transparent.  
  
Johnny must’ve known.  
  
If Johnny hadn’t known—  
  
If Johnny hadn’t known, then he’d just found out exactly how broken—  
  
If Johnny hadn’t known, or if he had, he’d been angry. Cursing.  
  
The phone rang again, more intensely, insofar as that was electronically possible.  
  
TJ, on the floor, shivered with bone-deep unspeakable distress.  
  
The phone stopped making sounds. He felt a sob catch in his throat: recognizable and ugly, like torn moth’s-wings.  
  
But there was one more sound, the buzz of a voicemail. He didn’t understand.  
  
And after the message the phone rang again, because clearly Johnny wouldn’t stop; he lunged off the floor and scrabbled among pillows. Closed his hand around slim plastic.  
  
He didn’t even get a word out before Johnny started. “—Christ, TJ, I was so fucking scared, don’t fucking leave me like that, not when I can’t even—god, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—”  
  
“Wait—what—”  
  
“I can come over. If you need me. If you even want me, Jesus, I’m such an idiot. I can be there in an hour.”  
  
“…from Texas…?”  
  
“I’ll make it happen. Are you okay? Please say you’re okay, I mean only if you are, please tell me how to help.”  
  
TJ, confused enough to forget about panicking for a minute, went with, “I’m…confused?”  
  
Johnny exhaled. Shaken. High-wire wobbling on that end. “I wasn’t mad at you. You know that, right?”  
  
“…no?”  
  
“What the _fuck_.” The profanity came out as a growl. “No, I’m not mad at you. Not for that, not ever, baby, understand? I’m pissed at your doctors for making you feel trapped, and if I ever meet—you said Sean—I’m gonna punch him through a wall, nobody should _ever_ hurt you that bad, but—I’m not mad at _you_. I never was.”  
  
“You said…”  
  
“I know. My stupid mouth—” Johnny sighed. “I’ll say the rest again. Like, a hundred times. A million. I’m not mad at you.”  
  
“You don’t have to say it a million times.”  
  
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll still come if you want me. Right now.”  
  
“I’m okay.” He found he meant it. Maybe not according to any standard definition, but Johnny’s ferocity poured from the speaker like an indignant warrior, squaring up to evildoers on his behalf. “I do want you here. I think. But I can wait. Even you can’t fly here in an hour.” He curled into a ball in the center of his bed, folded his topmost comforter around himself, turned that space into a dim fluffy cocoon. Himself and Johnny’s voice. “Also not scared of you.”  
  
“—you wouldn’t be. That was dumb. Sorry.” Johnny hesitated. “Do you need…should I call someone? For you?”  
  
“No. I am okay, I swear.” He shut both eyes, holding fast to Johnny’s presence in the dark; opened them. “You didn’t know.”  
  
“Rumors,” Johnny said tightly, “nothin’ else. I never paid much attention. Thank you, thank you, for telling me. I’m sorry I pushed you.”  
  
“You needed to.” He put his head down on one arm. “I needed to tell you. If we’re doing this. You should know. You asked.”  
  
“That’s not why I said it. The thank you.”  
  
“I know.” The pause lingered, not uncomfortable. Rose-pink and fuzzy, adrenaline ebb dwindling into mild undefined embarrassment.  
  
“Do you,” Johnny asked quietly, “want to talk about it?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Do you want to…talk about…I don’t know. Something else?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Um…you want me to talk?”  
  
“Is there anything _you_ don’t like? I mean the—the checklists.”  
  
“Really? You still want—”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Oh. Okay, um. I’d try most things, but, um, nothing with fire? Heat?”  
  
“Really?” But even as he asked he had an idea, and was subsequently proved right.  
  
“Yeah, I’ve seen shit go wrong with fire too much. I wouldn’t want to take the chance. Not with you. Is that cool?”  
  
“We’re talking about fire,” TJ said, “so, literally, no, but yeah, makes sense.”  
  
“Wow,” Johnny said. “You went there. With the joke,” but his tone said other things, more grave and more hope-infused. “And I thought I made the worst jokes.”  
  
“About the restraints,” TJ said, very low, half under his breath, “the doctors—it was probably a good idea. Then. Don’t be angry at them. For that one.”  
  
Johnny sighed. “Can I be angry that you had to go through it at all? Not at you. Just at, y’know, the fact that someone hurt you and I wasn’t there. Don’t tell me I didn’t even know you. Doesn’t matter.”  
  
TJ’s mouth did the unaccustomed smiling quirk again, the one from the first night they’d met. His mouth liked Johnny Storm. “You’re here now. I’m here now. And, okay, nothing with fire. Maybe ice?”  
  
“Maybe. Sort of neutral about ice. But if you like sensation we can try. That’s it for me, really. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t think I know enough to try anything heavy, but I’m pretty willing to jump in headfirst, you might’ve noticed.”  
  
“Might’ve, yeah.” The pause lingered, not uncomfortably so. TJ felt a little cold, and a little like he might be safely and tiredly on the other side of the anxiety swamp, and a little like he ought to say something else, but he couldn’t think of what.  
  
“Are you staying warm?” Johnny asked, reading his mind. “You said you wanted me to, um, take care of you. That was a thing. So, um, are you warm enough? Right now.”  
  
“Not…quite?” He bit a lip, went for it: “What do you want me to do?”  
  
“Oh…you want me to, right now…are you absolutely sure? Because, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I’m gonna say no to sex unless you’re sure.”  
  
“I want you to make me feel good,” TJ said. “You can do that, right? So I want you to.”  
  
Johnny must have been moving around, on the other end; he sounded like he’d rearranged positions. “Are you in your apartment? Can you turn up the heat?”  
  
“ _That’s_ your first order?”  
  
“Yeah. It is. Go turn up the heat.”  
  
“Oh,” TJ said, cheeks flushing slightly, heart picking up the pace, “all right, hang on,” and went and found his thermostat. Obediently.  
  
“Get in bed,” Johnny said. “Keep your clothes on if you’re cold. But tell me you’re in bed.”  
  
“I am. I even have socks on.”  
  
“Good,” Johnny said, and the word slammed into TJ’s heart and head and blood like fire, like a symphony: flame on, he thought fleetingly, and he wanted to laugh, except he did feel like flame, like he’d been lit up everywhere from the single word of praise.  
  
“So I think I want you to talk,” Johnny mused. “We covered shit you didn’t like. Was there something you did like? Something you wanted to try? Tell me.”  
  
“I…well, I…” He licked his lips. Fought the rush of nervousness; felt the shiver of arousal _at_ the nervousness. He’d almost forgotten that swooping bashful first-leap feeling. His skin prickled with excitement, and the heat simmered, growing. “I like it when you talk to me. Praise kink, you called it.”  
  
“Yeah, me too. But we know that one.” A smile colored Johnny’s voice. “So you’re just teasing me.”  
  
“True. I liked you taking care of me. In the bath. If bathing me can be a kink.”  
  
“Totally can. Next time I’m getting in there with you.”  
  
“I think I could like…getting on my knees for you?” He had to clarify: “What I was reading. Just staying on my knees, at your feet, being touched. Maybe with your cock in my mouth? And you could pet my hair.”  
  
“Oh.” Johnny sounded breathless. “Yeah. I like that one. You’d like being a good little cockwarmer for me, baby? Keeping your mouth full, keeping you at my feet, while I pet you? And if you behave, if you stay put and wait, I’ll let you come.”  
  
TJ’s own cock, taking a decided interest in the words, hardened. Blood rushing under skin, hot and impatient.  
  
He managed, “Yeah…I like…I like it when you tell me I’m good. Feels…good.”  
  
“Then I’ll tell you all the fucking time. Because you are. For me.” The words landed like a caress, firm as Johnny’s hands on bare skin.  
  
“If I’m good you’ll let me come?”  
  
“You like that?” Johnny now sounded alert, and turned on, and ever so slightly entertained. “How’re you feeling? I can hear it in your voice.”  
  
“Like last time, but not as much?” He felt too hot under the blankets; he felt tremulous and oversensitive. He wanted—  
  
He whispered, “I liked…there was something about…if you didn’t want to let me, if it was up to you…and I thought about the next party. About wearing a. A plug. Under my suit. And maybe a cock ring. And you’d—you’d know, and you’d tease me, all night, but I couldn’t—not until you let me, if I was good.”  
  
“Jesus.” Johnny was moving more; a sweep of lost clothing echoed down the line. “You have the best fucking fantasies. We’re so doing that. Are you hard? Right now.”  
  
“Yeah…” It came out like a moan, like a whimper. “Can I—?”  
  
“You can touch,” Johnny decided, “but don’t come. Keep talking. You want me to be in charge? You want me to decide what you get, whether you get to come, what you deserve? You want to put on a cock ring or, hell, a cock cage for me, wearing that and a plug, so you’re filled up and aching for me, for hours?”  
  
TJ whimpered again. Hand wrapped around his cock, under shoved-down jeans and boxers; every stroke of his own hand over heated flesh was agony, and delicious, knowing he couldn’t find release. He couldn’t seem to stop, arching his back and pushing into his own hand, squeezing slightly to feel the frisson of denial.  
  
“That’s not talking,” Johnny pointed out, amused. “Tell me what you want, baby. Are you touching yourself?”  
  
“Yeah…god…”  
  
“Me too.” And panting, accompanied by the telltale sounds of skin on skin. “Tell me what you’re doing. And what you’re thinking about.”  
  
“Touching…you said I could— _oh_ —and thinking about you. Your hand…”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Anywhere, fuck…on me, or…oh, _fuck_ , come on, please—” He was panting now, sweat at temples, skin flushed. His cock slid slickly through clutching fingers. His whole body yearned, not given permission; and he wanted to cry from frustration and wanted to wait forever if Johnny asked that of him.  
  
“Anywhere,” Johnny pondered, “so that could be my hand, right where yours is…or I could just touch you, pet your hair, you said…maybe put that hand on the back of your neck and just keep you on your knees, so sweet, such a good boy, doing everything I ask, so perfect…”  
  
TJ’s breath caught: diamonds splintering through his vision. His cock felt impossibly hard, impossibly heavy and stiff between his thighs, rubbed by his hand; the glorious need spread out everyplace, diffuse as waves, bearing him up.  
  
“So good,” Johnny praised him once more. “You need to come, baby, don’t you? But you won’t, until I say so. Because you’re mine, and you’re being good.”  
  
He wanted to cry: he was made of need and denial and eagerness and shame at the eagerness and coruscating sparkles, poised on the edge between endless pleasure and oversaturated pain. He kept caressing his cock. Johnny hadn’t told him to stop.  
  
Johnny whispered, “Now, go on, come for me.”  
  
The world dissolved into rapture. Those diamonds again, molten this time.  
  
He went away momentarily, not as profoundly as before, only drifting in the clouds. He woke back up to stickiness on his hand and Johnny’s voice saying his name.  
  
“Johnny,” he said, breathless. The name came out like a question, like a plea.  
  
“Right here. Back with me?”  
  
“Fuzzy. You…was I…was that…”  
  
“Were you good?” Johnny’s voice soothed, cradled, suffused his soul. “Fuck yeah. Everything I asked for, baby, you were so good. And before you ask, hell yes I did.”  
  
“Mmm.” The world shimmered. His limbs felt heavy, uncoordinated, honeyed. “Now I do want you here. Just to…touch.”  
  
“I would. I want to, too, baby, believe me.” Johnny sounded like he meant it; like TJ could believe he meant it. “I wish I was there.”  
  
“I wish you were,” TJ said, and then a sudden haze blurred his vision: tears, though he wasn’t sad, or he didn’t think so. Raindrops that didn’t fall. “Johnny?”  
  
“Still here. Um. For another…twenty minutes. I’ve got a publicity thing at three. But I’m not gonna leave you like this, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” TJ agreed peacefully. Easy to believe, amid the bliss. Easy to believe right now.  
  
A sliver of dark nudged its way in, black tinting golden clouds. So easy to agree. Right now.  
  
He thought, as he’d thought before: I want this too much.  
  
He did not trust himself with wanting.  
  
But Johnny said, firm and commanding, “I need you to listen a little more, all right? I need you to do something for me,” and TJ’s heart gave in. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“Oh.” Johnny’s voice danced: surprise and delight. “God. You—I’ve gotta make sure you’re all right before I go, I’m taking care of you. I promise. So I need you to get up, if you can. Don’t clean up yet, I like you messy, but go out to your kitchen—do you have food?”  
  
Getting up might’ve been difficult, but he had command to lean on; he glanced at his feet, was surprised to find them on the floor and not hovering giddily above. He let the order float him into the other room. “Half a pizza? Oreos?”  
  
“Grab those. Chocolate. Do you have milk?”  
  
“Milk is weird. So no. Sir.”  
  
“Milk is _not_ weird—! Never mind. Later. Water, then. Hydrate. And go back to bed. Bring everything.”  
  
TJ, nestled back into pillows, reality sharpening gradually into presence, ate another Oreo. “It’s the texture.”  
  
“Huh? Get a blanket. Even if you think you’re warm enough, you might crash.”  
  
“I have an extra one. About milk. The texture. In my mouth. How are you so good at this?”  
  
Johnny laughed. The laugh burrowed into TJ’s heart and kept on glowing. “I’m not. I’m making it up. And looking some shit up. And…well, I told you. I used to know some people, and I tried a lot of stuff, and they liked to play with me.” A memory glinted along the last couple words. TJ guessed, “You liked this. Chocolate. After.”  
  
“She was great,” Johnny reminisced, affection palpable and unalloyed and nothing more. “Feeding me, talking to me, making sure nothing hurt…I figured out it was more her thing than mine, at least that direction. Kinda always wanted to try the other way. I told you.”  
  
“And now you have me.”  
  
“And now I have you. Feeling better?”  
  
“It was never bad. But, yeah, I feel…” He waved a hand. Less weightiness, more coordination. “Really awesome, actually. Incandescent.”  
  
“Huh. Not sure I ever got that part. Will you be okay if I go do this interview?”  
  
“Oh, sure.” The world felt awfully bright and defined, etched in the amber radiance of a late afternoon. He also felt more alive than he remembered being in a very long time. He didn’t know how to say as much, or even if he wanted to say it—too big, too immense, everything Johnny’d done for him—so he didn’t. He held onto the feeling, private and pensive. It battled the tiny edge of dark doubt from before, not a comprehensive victory but one in progress. “I might turn on the tv? Noise?”  
  
“Was that a question? You don’t have to ask permission. It’s your tv.”  
  
He shrugged, knowing Johnny couldn’t see. “I wasn’t really. Can I clean up yet? Sort of sticky over here.”  
  
“Here too, and…wait two minutes after we get off the phone. Exactly. Are you busy tonight? Can I call you?”  
  
“Family dinner,” TJ said, lying under blankets, nibbling Oreos, hearing Johnny’s voice in his ear. Even the existence of his family seemed not like an insurmountable obstacle to happiness but one that could be overcome. “Text me anyway. Even if I don’t answer right away. Why two minutes?”  
  
“Felt like it. I’ll at least check in with you, you’re only an hour ahead. Oh, shit, I’ve gotta change, I’ve got like five minutes—was that enough, are you feeling okay, I’ll stay if you want?”  
  
Two minutes, he thought. Because Johnny’d felt like that. And told him so. “I’m good. You can go.”  
  
“You’re fantastic and I want to kiss you and I’ll talk to you later,” Johnny said, and hung up. The phone went blank, quiescent, fulfilled.  
  
He looked at the clock. He looked at the package of Oreos, and the cup of water. His cock, spent and flaccid, hanging limp from unfastened pants, stirred faintly with the echo of want.  
  
Johnny Storm had a life. Johnny had publicity and a motorcycle and family and charity stunt-leaps with death-defying odds. Johnny enjoyed trying everything; Johnny’d wanted, had been wanting, a chance to try this. With someone.  
  
He knew all that. He knew.  
  
He knew how much he wanted. He knew how obsessively he _could_ want, when he loved a person or a sensation or the resultant glittering high.  
  
He’d asked Johnny to make him feel good in the wake of earlier panic. Johnny’d listened. Johnny’d been prepared to say no to sex, no to sex with TJ Hammond, unless convinced of the yes.  
  
He counted down seconds, in his head; he held onto the order, and let it balance him.  
  
He ate one more Oreo, and tasted chocolate and cream. He flipped on the television for company, but he didn’t need it, he understood, surprised: he wasn’t lonely.


	5. can I survive the overbearing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Johnny Storm visits, and events unfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: minor food issues (TJ not being used to eating much, and kind of getting dizzy when faced with Johnny's idea of lunch), references to past drug addiction, references to past self-harm.
> 
> I apologize about the emotional cliffhanger. Happy endings, trust me!

Johnny Storm blew into TJ’s apartment doorway at half-past one, on Tuesday. TJ’s world got brighter.  
  
He’d known that Johnny’s flight’d been delayed. He’d honestly been expecting arrival even later. He wondered blankly how Johnny’d gotten to his apartment; he’d half-planned to offer a car. Not his own, since he had neither a vehicle nor a currently valid license, but a First Son could summon a car and driver, and he could’ve been in it, and met storm-blue eyes at the airport.  
  
“I rented a bike,” Johnny said—this meant motorcycle, obviously—and followed him in. “Mine’s being driven back to New York. It’s a stunt bike anyway. This one’s okay. Not mine, but we get along. And I wanted to get here fast.”  
  
TJ smiled, then: watching Johnny turn, take in high ceilings and new furniture, whistle. Short beach-sand hair stood out like dandelion-fuzz from the helmet; Johnny’s shoulders were instantly at home, as they were anywhere. “Nice.”  
  
“Yeah,” TJ said, “I picked the whole place with you in mind, everything, just hoping for your good opinion.”  
  
“Which you’ve got,” Johnny said cheerfully, and stepped closer and kissed him: not using hands because they were occupied with bags, but not needing them. The kiss spread down to TJ’s toes, possessive and deep and passionate; he melted into it and became purely Johnny’s good boy.  
  
“Mmm,” Johnny said. “Pretty sure I could do that all day.”  
  
TJ wobbled a little on his feet, no longer being kissed, and glared. “Why aren’t you?”  
  
“Because I have a present for you. Here.”  
  
“You have a present—”  
  
“Not the one in my pants. But that too. No, open this.”  
  
TJ took it, bemusedly. Pulled off crumpled paper. “You…bought me an armadillo bobblehead?”  
  
“He’s from Texas! And he’s happy!” Johnny’s voice bubbled over with enthusiasm. “And I thought, um, you might—he’s smiling, look, he’s totally thrilled to see you!”  
  
TJ poked the armadillo. Its head wobbled. So did its tail. The whole thing looked like tourist kitsch from an airport gift shop, portable and Southwest-themed.  
  
“Okay,” Johnny said, deflating, “so I totally bought him in an airport and it’s a stupid tourist thing but—”  
  
“He does look happy.” TJ petted the armadillo’s nose with a fingertip. “He’s…cute. But not as cute as you.” He batted eyes for emphasis. Johnny snorted. TJ grinned, and set the ludicrous little animal on the closest bookshelf. It bobbled cheerfully at a luxurious hardcover copy of _Erotic Nudes of Classical Greece_ , which seemed astonished but willing enough to share space.  
  
“I also brought lunch.” Vast piles of meat and bread and cheese emerged from bags, ending up in mountains on his counter. TJ recognized the logo on the bags; Johnny’d been to the deli around the corner. “This place any good?”  
  
“I…think so. I don’t know.”  
  
“Never been?” So much food. And Johnny’s hands. Johnny’s grin, casual and ordinary.  
  
So ordinary. Food. What normal people did for lunch. Normal people…  
  
The smells of vinegar and Italian spices got into his nose. He blinked. He focused on his refrigerator: that blank white space that’d barely held anything, a few Oreos and some nibbles of pizza. He thought about Hammond family breakfasts and the yellow shine of eggs when Douglas put them on his plate. He thought about Johnny’s hands and Johnny’s sudden appearance and being kissed and so many emotions. He put a hand across his mouth.  
  
“TJ?”  
  
“I’m just…not very hungry. It’s fine.”  
  
“TJ, you’ve been eating, right?”  
  
“I—I don’t know. I can’t. But it’s okay, you can—”  
  
“Dude,” Johnny argued. “You need to eat. And you had pizza. When you called me.”  
  
“I can’t—it’s not—” It’s not linear. It’s not—  
  
It’s not. God. Not. Everything turned into not. Too much, processed deli meat glistening and preserved and red and brown and folded over on itself; cheese slick and white and gleaming—  
  
No no no. No. Please.  
  
Too much. Too much right now, right here, on his countertop, not ordered by him, and the smell, the scent—  
  
He shut his eyes. Or he thought he did. Black spots. Dancing.  
  
“Jesus—” Hands on his shoulders. Holding him up. Shaking him. “TJ. Is it the food? I’ll throw it the fuck away, Christ, sit down, oh no, no, baby, come on—”  
  
He blinked. The world inched back toward focus. He’d been pushed onto a bar stool. Johnny’s scared eyes hovered inches from his.  
  
He opened his mouth for words. Shook his head. The no got tangled in vocal cords and made him feel sick.  
  
“TJ,” Johnny begged. “Look at me. Please, Christ, I don’t know what to do.”  
  
Johnny Storm should never be so scared. He hauled shipwrecks upright. “It’s…I’m…it’s okay.”  
  
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Johnny swore. “No. You’re not. You’re as white as—TJ, please, is it the food, you totally haven’t been eating and here I am bringing—god, okay, hang on, I’ll throw it—”  
  
“No.” He caught Johnny’s sleeve. The armadillo watched with silent compassion from its shelf. “No. It’s just too much. For me. But go on.”  
  
“I didn’t think.” Johnny’s voice ached. “I’m sorry.” The words held more, ringed around with perilous edges: I never think, I charge ahead, I’m that feckless physical guy, thinking about appetites, and you—  
  
“You did,” TJ said. The world teetered, fell back into normal spin. His hand rested on Johnny’s forearm. “You wanted to feed me. You bought me an armadillo. We’re fine.”  
  
“Are we?”  
  
TJ ran tongue over dry lips. Met Johnny’s anxious eyes. “Yeah. You…should have the meat.”  
  
Johnny blinked. Blinked again.  
  
“All the meat,” TJ said.  
  
“Fuck,” Johnny said: amazed, incredulous, relieved. “You, um…not feeling up to…meat?”  
  
“Are we still doing the metaphor?” He slid his hand into Johnny’s. Squeezed. “Either way give me a few minutes. But I missed you.”  
  
“And I missed you, baby.” Johnny held his hand as if entrusted with a priceless relic. “You’re still kinda white. Like a ghost. Sexy ghost. With bad puns about meat. How can I help?”  
  
TJ started to answer on instinct, and stopped. He’d almost said three words: I love you.  
  
“Your sexy ghost,” he said, instead. “I’m okay, really. Just dizzy. For a sec.”  
  
“Too much,” Johnny said softly, echoing his words. “Okay. Got it. I think. I hope. I think maybe you should eat something, though. Maybe I’ve got an idea.”  
  
“Tell me, then.”  
  
“Stay put and I’ll show you.”  
  
TJ raised eyebrows. Johnny laughed, a sound tinged with thankfulness, and sat down on the bar stool next to his. Made a long arm and grabbed a hunk of bread. “Open your mouth.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yep. I’m gonna feed you. By hand.”  
  
“You—”  
  
Johnny put bread in his mouth. TJ chewed. Considered this turn of events while deciding that maybe he liked the tang of rye.  
  
Johnny’s eyes studied him. “Okay?”  
  
“So,” TJ said, once he could talk, “you want me to sit here while you hand-feed me pieces of bread, sir?”  
  
“And maybe cheese.” Johnny tore off another bite-sized morsel of rye. “Whatever I want to give you.”  
  
“Oh,” TJ said this time, because sudden arousal had turned his knees to water. Different kind of dizziness. At least he was sitting down. “Yeah. Um. Okay. Should I—get on my knees, or—”  
  
“Nah.” Johnny held out a sliver of cheese this time. TJ leaned forward. Nibbled it out of callused fingers. Johnny brushed a thumb over his lips, after: a reward. “This is fine. You’re doing good, baby. So good for me. Eat more.”  
  
Sitting next to Johnny at the counter in his kitchen, he did.  
  
The edges of the world seemed to soften, gradually. As if each bite drew him deeper into enchantment, every time he ate from Johnny’s hand, bent his head for a caress, heard murmurs of praise and encouragement that made his mind swim in gold. Afternoon sunshine splashed his shoulder, his countertop, an abandoned paper bag. Johnny’s hand kept offering tidbits, nothing large, nothing demanding for his stomach or tastebuds. Johnny’s fingers slipped into his mouth occasionally; TJ parted lips for them, enjoying the dreamy sensation of having his mouth full.  
  
The universe felt mundane, felt extraordinary: just a kitchen, bar stools, he wasn’t even on the floor, they were practically the same height. But he was Johnny’s, sitting here being fed and petted and praised, and this felt natural. Right.  
  
Safe.  
  
“So proud of you.” Johnny’s voice was a low rumble through ocean waves. “I like this one, I think. Taking care of you. Feels good.”  
  
“Me, too,” TJ said hazily. “Good.”  
  
He would’ve said more, but Johnny’s stomach made a noise. He processed this. “Did you… _you_ haven’t been eating.”  
  
“Kinda busy.”  
  
“Well,” TJ said, “that’s not fair, is it, this is a reciprocal relationship, everything you sent me to read said so,” and got up, wobbly but determined. “Make yourself a sandwich and come here.”  
  
“Bossy for a submissive,” Johnny said, but did as ordered, with a sidelong glance while collecting a heap of freshly-sliced meat. TJ tugged on his hand; Johnny followed him to the table. “Am I just eating by myself? Are you watching?”  
  
“No,” TJ said, and slid to the floor, and pressed his mouth to the vee of Johnny’s pants, feeling the bulge there, breathing him in: heat and denim and maleness, that wonderful heady knowledge of being wanted, making a cock—Johnny’s cock—swell and strain and grow fat because of him. “We sort of. Talked about. Me on the floor with—”  
  
“—my cock in your mouth,” Johnny finished. “You down there, just taking it, letting me fuck you if I want, when I want, or if I don’t, and you’d just sit there and be patient—god, you do want this.” He was looking down; TJ knew his own arousal was evident, rock-hard through slim-fit pants. He’d been planning to dress up for Johnny; he knew he looked good in this pair. He arched his back a little.  
  
“Well, okay,” Johnny said. “You look so gorgeous, TJ, I mean, I know you know, but I just wanted to tell you,” and then reached down and ran a hand through his hair. TJ practically came on the spot, kneeling between Johnny Storm’s legs, being touched. He moaned, shameless. His erection wanted to push through his pants. He did not move a hand to stroke himself; he did not want to. He nuzzled Johnny’s cock again, through jeans, clumsily.  
  
“Here you go,” Johnny murmured, and the zipper peeled down, and that length sprang free at last, thick and masculine and long. TJ might’ve whimpered. He certainly couldn’t think.  
  
“Come here.” Johnny’s hand guided his head, coaxed him down, kept him in position. TJ let the weight and taste and wonderfulness of that cock become his world: he was Johnny’s, and he would be so good.  
  
Kneeling below his table with Johnny Storm’s cock in his mouth, he thought that this had to be bliss; and then he stopped thinking as coherence went away.  
  
He licked and sucked at the shaft, the head. He lavished attention on the tip, the spot at the underside that made Johnny catch breath, the slit where bittersweet droplets landed on his tongue. Johnny petted his hair, let the hand fall to rest at the nape of his neck, held him down. TJ could not moan, mouth occupied, but relaxed into the control: surrendering, yielding.  
  
Johnny thrust up into his mouth, into his throat: small nudges, experimental. TJ let his eyes flutter shut. He could be very skilled at offering pleasure—he had been before—but right now he was simply being, simply a hot wet space for Johnny to use, for Johnny to direct and claim and play with and enjoy, and every atom of his body thrilled to that simple fact.  
  
He felt himself go languid, melting. Johnny’s firm hand kept him in place and sometimes let him up to breathe.  
  
Johnny talked to him, in between bites of food. TJ liked that, though he wasn’t quite sure why: the knowledge felt right. Johnny up there eating lunch, casually; TJ here on the floor, keeping Johnny’s cock warm and happy. Being praised, being good, making Johnny feel good too.  
  
His arousal hung heavy between his legs, and that felt good too, in a detached sort of way: he knew that he would come if Johnny told him to, but he didn’t need that. He needed this. Floating in the sunlight.  
  
Johnny thrust deeper into his throat, blocking air momentarily. TJ tried to open up even more, to relax further: he did not need to breathe if Johnny wanted this, not yet, anyway. Johnny wouldn’t hurt him. Peacefulness sang in his bones, though he felt lightheaded.  
  
Johnny said something that might’ve been amazement; that cock pulsed down his throat, a single spurt of desire, and then pulled back. TJ whined, begging, wetness on his lips: had he not been good enough, was Johnny done so soon—  
  
“Fuck,” Johnny said, breathless. “TJ—we’re taking this to your bedroom, okay? Right now.”  
  
Oh, TJ’s lips said, no sound.  
  
“Unless you want me to come right here,” Johnny said, laughing a little, not at him, only out of pleasure, “all over your face, as you sit there—”  
  
TJ whimpered, sunlight flooding his veins, dazzling heartbeats, turning eternity into radiance.  
  
“No, I missed you, I want to be inside you,” Johnny decided, and grabbed his wrist and pulled him off the floor. “Where’s your bedroom?”  
  
Oh. Yes. Johnny hadn’t been here before. Funny. TJ’s heart felt as if he always had.  
  
He couldn’t move limbs very well—sluggish and tipsy, like swimming in honey—but he glanced that way, indicating. Johnny kept the hand wrapped around his wrist and used that as a leash. TJ stumbled, not because of any obstacle but because he thought he might’ve had an orgasm, or something like one, a miniature quake of ecstasy that rushed though him head to toe.  
  
Johnny stripped him naked with commanding ease. “I like your bed.”  
  
“It’s new,” TJ said, slowly, painstakingly getting words out. He wanted to explain. “For us.”  
  
Johnny’s eyebrows flew up. The rest of him paused, half-dressed. “You bought a bed for us?”  
  
“I bought a bed. Because…I wanted…I didn’t want the old one. Memories.” He lay on his side, gazing up at Johnny Storm. “I wanted this one to just have you. And me. And you.”  
  
“Oh, TJ.” Johnny came over, kicking away boxers, sitting beside him. One hand rubbed his back; TJ moaned softly as the caress transformed him to music and light. Johnny ran the hand down to his hip, and back up, long continuous gentling strokes. “How’d I get so damn lucky? I mean, you. So sweet, so brilliant, such a big heart, baby, the way you give everything when you want someone, and you want me, and I can’t even…I’m tryin’ so hard and you deserve so much better than all the shit you’ve been through and if you want me I’ll be here and take care of you the best I can, I promise you that, baby.”  
  
TJ felt the words and the petting pour through him; felt the alchemy of them working, transmuting his languorous body into airy freedom, sublimated. He whispered, “I want you,” and Johnny bent down and rolled him to his back and moved atop him, kissing him.  
  
Between kisses, between scattering marks of teeth and lips over bare shoulders and chest and throat, Johnny teased, “Bought you a couple other presents, too…want one?” His breath tickled TJ’s collarbone; TJ wriggled in response.  
  
Johnny sat up, said, “Stay put,” and caught TJ’s hands and set them on the pillow. “No touching. I’ll be right back.” He went, and came back, with one of the bags. TJ lay in place obediently. No restraints. Nothing holding him down. Nothing except voice and desire.  
  
Johnny set something on the bedside table, then knelt over him. Held up a slim strip of black leather with snaps. TJ trusted Johnny wholeheartedly, and couldn’t focus enough to make a guess. Johnny Storm holding black leather above him had overwhelmed all his senses.  
  
“Not tying you down,” Johnny murmured, obviously misunderstanding the lack of response. “I wouldn’t, I won’t, I swear. You said you wanted to play with some denial, cock rings, that kinda thing, and this won’t stop you from coming but it’ll make it harder, and I thought it’d look good on you?”  
  
TJ’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He settled for nodding, frantically.  
  
“So good for me,” Johnny said, “so sweet,” and wrapped leather around the base of his cock, and held it: not quite snapped shut. “Too tight? More?”  
  
Everything in the universe was centered between his legs. Tightness clamped around his shaft, Johnny handling his cock and balls, the quivering throb of wetness dribbling from his slit… “More,” he begged. “Not—not much, just…”  
  
Johnny’s hands made the adjustment. Just enough, and the sensation doubled and redoubled, physical and emotional. He thought he might be crying; Johnny leaned up to bump their noses together. “Is this hurting you? Should’ve put it on earlier, really…”  
  
“No, please…I like…being yours… _please_.” He’d never known what intoxication could be until now. The purest glowing heights: his body adorned in leather for Johnny Storm.  
  
“Please what, baby?” Johnny ran a hand over him again: from the hollow at the base of his throat, across his chest, down over his stomach, along a thigh, avoiding his straining cock. “You want me to fuck you?”  
  
TJ managed, because his Johnny liked sarcasm, “Yes, _sir_ ,” and listened to the resultant laugh, euphoric.

"Can I…" Johnny paused, waved an unopened condom at him. "We need one of these? I can promise you we're good on this end, I've got my last physical results, if you want. Or whatever you want, if you're comfortable or not, just tell me."

"You can," TJ told him. "You can. I want—yeah. That. Please." He meant: thank you for asking. Thank you for trusting my answer, that answer from me. I want this. Oh god yes I want this. I _want_.  
  
Johnny worked him open with callused fingers and a stunt-rider’s physical knowledge; Johnny Storm understood bodies, the way they moved and stretched, the punishment and flexibility that could be demanded. Johnny was swift and eager but careful, leaving his hole slick with lube and ready for claiming.  
  
When Johnny pushed inside him, they both gasped.  
  
“Fuck.” Johnny’s eyes found his, awed, delighted, looking down at TJ below him on the bed. “This isn’t gonna last too long—for me, I mean—you feel so—”  
  
“Please,” TJ begged, “please fuck me, please,” and Johnny did just that.  
  
Hard. Fast. Slamming into his opened-up body. Pounding into him over and over. TJ shuddered in delirious intensity, lost between the sensations of Johnny’s cock pumping inside him and his own restrained erection rubbing between their stomachs. Johnny kissed him again, panting, open-mouthed, sweaty and strong atop him. TJ moaned, moving helplessly against him.  
  
Johnny swore out loud, grabbed his hips, jerked him closer, thrust—TJ cried out, because, oh, _there_ , that spot deep inside—and came, shaking, groaning TJ’s name.  
  
TJ’s body quivered on the brink, frustrated, throbbing with white lightning, unreleased.  
  
“Shh,” Johnny murmured, and slid out of him; pushed his legs further apart, gazed at him, at his sex-slick open hole, at twitching muscle and wet come inside him. TJ sobbed, not protesting, overcome. Johnny pressed a finger, two fingers, into him, into that well-used aching unfulfilled space. TJ’s body hurt with the need and the humiliation and the denial: Johnny kept looking at him, _inside_ him, and hadn’t told him he could come, and he was Johnny’s…  
  
Johnny found that spot inside him again, where he was so messy from Johnny’s cock and climax, and teased it with fingers, sending ripples of electricity through him. Whispered, “Told you it’d be harder, baby, with that on, but you can, I want to see you do it for me, come for me, TJ.”  
  
He came. He came gasping and jerking and trembling, tossed in whitewater rapids, a waterfall spilling free. He came all over himself and the cock ring Johnny’d put on him; his hole clenched mindlessly around Johnny’s hand. The world vanished in pleasure.  
  
He woke up to Johnny’s other hand petting his hip and Johnny’s fingers tracing the rim of his hole and Johnny’s tongue lapping gently and inexorably at the very tip of his cock, dipping into the slit, tasting him. He promptly passed out again, or nearly so, nerves dazed and spent and overloaded.  
  
The next time he woke up, Johnny’d taken the messy leather off him and cleaned his stomach, but left his sticky-slick thighs and hole alone. Johnny was lying beside him, hand cupping his cock protectively, eyes on TJ’s face. “Hey.”  
  
“Oh,” TJ said weakly. “Oh, wow.”  
  
“Same.” Johnny smirked. “So I’ve got good taste in presents for you, then.”  
  
“Technically,” TJ said as loftily as he could manage at that extremely satisfied moment, “that was my idea. On the phone.”  
  
“Oh really.” Johnny dove in to kiss him. “So I’ve got to think of something else to keep up with you, then.”  
  
“But you do have…good taste.”  
  
“So do you. Pineapple?”  
  
“It was on my pizza. That’s a myth. Or at least you’d have to eat excessive amounts of it. Not that I’m opposed to trying.”  
  
“I think you taste like pineapple and adorableness,” Johnny said. “I have one more present for you.”  
  
“That’s not a thing you can taste like,” TJ said, “and I thought we just did that.”  
  
“Which one of us is in charge, again? Oh, right, you, I’m in your bed—” Johnny leaned all the way over TJ, purposefully rubbing bodies together, to scoop the one more present off the nightstand. “Except for how you want me to be. In charge.”  
  
“I might be rethinking that,” TJ said, eying the size of the anal plug. “For the record, I already have one. It vibrates.”  
  
“You’re gonna show me sometime, and I don’t care, I bought this one for you, so you’re gonna wear it.”  
  
“Oh. Oh—you mean right _now?_ Fuck.”  
  
“Too sore?”  
  
TJ fixed him with an indignant scowl. “I can take anything you want to try.”  
  
“Not what I asked,” Johnny said, and the affection and kindness in that tone shattered the defenses around TJ’s heart for good.  
  
He whispered, “I’m tired but I’m okay, I’m not sore, I want to, for you,” while his heart was busy regarding itself and its downed shields with shock.  
  
“ _My_ TJ,” Johnny said softly, and worked the plug into his body, where it would hold him stretched and ready and hold the remnants of Johnny’s come inside.

He stayed curled up against Johnny in the bed for a while after that, both of them naked and lazy; Johnny put on a few movies, the first Indiana Jones, _The Last Starfighter_. The arcade-game whiz-kid saved the galaxy, though first he tried to refuse the responsibility and run home. Johnny said, “I always liked him. Alex.”  
  
“Because he’s the hero. You’re supposed to like him.”  
  
“Because he’s such an ordinary guy. Like, we’d all have that reaction, if some old man showed up and said, hey, come get in my spaceship and be a hero.”  
  
“He goes back, though. To fight the aliens or whatever.”  
  
“Yeah, but he’s never really trying to be a hero. Mostly good instincts and luck and just…pushing buttons.” Johnny made a movement that would’ve been a shrug if TJ hadn’t been half-propped up on his chest: dismissing his own investment in a hero he saw as instinctive, physically gifted, not otherwise special. “Anyway.”  
  
“No,” TJ said, “I get it. But you’re wrong.”  
  
“You’ve never even seen this movie before.”  
  
“So I’m unbiased. And you’re still wrong. He does try. After he gets scared. He decides to fight anyway. For his co-pilot and the weird alien baby things. That matters. Deciding to try.”  
  
“They’re not weird alien baby things, Jesus, TJ,” Johnny said, “they’re his co-pilot’s kids,” but he blinked a couple of times, and after a second dropped a kiss on TJ’s hair. “Now be quiet while I put on _Spaceballs_.”  
  
“No promises,” TJ said contentedly, and napped on and off with Johnny’s warmth surrounding him and the thickness of Johnny’s toy, bought for him, inside him.  
  
Later that evening they ordered more pizza because Johnny pretended to complain about not having been present the last time. Later, after that, Johnny cradled TJ in bed and gradually worked the plug out of him and made love to him, deliberately and delicately, with mouth and tongue and kisses over tender flesh and eventually that wonderful cock, pushing up inside him as TJ sat nestled on Johnny’s lap, held close.  
  
Later, much later, he awakened at the sound of nothing at all.  
  
He lay in bed for a minute, feeling: the heat of Johnny Storm’s muscular body beside him, the in-and-out rustle of rhythmic male breathing, the silkiness of his sheets. He gazed up at the ceiling, at the tranquil moon-grey expanse of blank.  
  
He got up and collected his brand-new navy-blue comforter—fat and fluffy and warm; it’d come in the bag with the bedding and sheet set—from the floor where they’d kicked it earlier. He wandered, naked under quilted coziness, out to the living room.  
  
Familiar shapes awaited him, etched in silver and shadow. Bookcases and his table and his sofa. The wide smiles of picture windows. His piano. With its wobbly leg.  
  
He sat down on the bench, in a welcoming moonbeam.  
  
He touched dark satiny wood; he ran fingertips over the lines of the lid. The moonbeam brushed his skin; he paused to tug the comforter closer around him, though he didn’t mind being naked. The happy armadillo wasn’t facing him, but he could see it; he could see the open crack of his bedroom door, the sleeping sprawl of Johnny Storm’s leg and hip and outflung arm.  
  
He set fingers over onyx and ivory keys.  
  
His hands moved more slowly than they once had. But they did not shake. They found notes, clear and phantasmal; they fumbled, ran to catch up, remembered timing.  
  
He let the music flow through him, outward into the night. Chopin, meditative, a polonaise; Debussy’s _Preludes_ ; some Billy Joel because the melody worked its way in and refused to go. He breathed and tasted ups and downs, bright peaks and low murmurs of song. He did not think; he did not want to stop to think.  
  
He closed his eyes, and though he and this piano were new to each other, he found the right keys.  
  
When he opened his eyes he felt the weight of another gaze. Prickles darted around the back of his neck, not in a bad way. He turned, hands stilling between notes and continuation.  
  
Johnny Storm, unselfconsciously nude and leaning one-shouldered on the wall behind him, said softly, “Please don’t stop.”  
  
TJ played a ripple of Schumann for him, a coruscation of love-song. “I felt like trying.”  
  
Johnny came over—gingerly, as if afraid to interrupt blossomings of genius, but with hope of welcome in blue eyes—and rested hands on his shoulders, standing behind him. TJ leaned back into the hands, tipped his head to smile upward. “Were you listening?”  
  
“Yeah. I don’t know a fuckin’ thing about classical, but I liked it. It sounded…like you were thinking. About something. And then happy.”  
  
“I was. And I am.” He turned his head, kissed Johnny’s right hand. Johnny’s fingers pressed down more over bare skin: involuntary as a catch of desire. “I am.”  
  
“Good,” Johnny whispered. “Good.”  
  
“Take me to bed,” TJ said, nuzzling the hand, flirting with fingers, kissing calluses, teasing the joint of an index finger with tongue. “I want you.”  
  
And Johnny did, and Johnny wanted him too.  
  
In the morning they woke up later than planned—Johnny had a ten am flight up to New York, and they’d set TJ’s alarm for six-thirty but turned it off and had good-morning sex, sleep-clumsy and fumbling and laughing through it. Johnny woke up again at two minutes past eight, swore, shook TJ’s shoulder. “I have to go.”  
  
“What? Oh. Right. No…”  
  
“Adorable,” Johnny said, “too adorable, that’s not fair, that’s, like, a superpower,” and kissed him while trying to put on a sock. “I want to stay.”  
  
So stay, TJ’s heart wanted to say. Stay with me.  
  
Johnny had an interview in New York. Johnny had a life of shows and stunts and charity work. Johnny Storm was a good person.  
  
They’d never once named it, this thing between them.  
  
“When do I get to see you again?” Johnny lifted TJ’s hand in his, kissed it, rested it against his cheek for a pair of heartbeats. “Soon?”  
  
“Be my date,” TJ found himself saying, swinging feet out of bed, pulling on pajama pants, trailing that touch to the door.  
  
“Yes. For what?”  
  
“Mom’s celebration party. After the official presidential nominations. Next week. You—I mean, you don’t have to, if you’re busy, you’re probably busy—”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny interrupted, just enough firmness; TJ went quiet. “I already said yes. Text me where and when you want me and—anything. Anything. Got it?”  
  
“But—”  
  
“I’ll make time.”  
  
“You’ll be there with me,” TJ whispered, which wasn’t at all what he’d meant to say; he’d meant to say something about having a good time, or making time, or… “In front of everyone.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I?” Johnny shrugged on motorcycle jacket, picked up rental keys. “Kinda proud to be anywhere with you, TJ Hammond.”  
  
TJ flinched. His last name rang off the walls like a warning. Johnny _wasn’t_ like that. Johnny didn’t want to fuck him just to fuck the infamous Hammond—  
  
“For a kid who grew up around sharks, that’s a terrible poker face.” Johnny’s voice had gone exquisitely gentle: the tone of a man aware he’d opened up quicksand under someone else’s feet. “TJ, I meant I’m proud to be out with _you_. Not your family. Just you.”  
  
The quicksand steadied somewhat. “I know. I know that.”  
  
“Of course you do. You’re perfect.”  
  
“Of course I am,” TJ said, flippant.  
  
Johnny leaned in. Planted a kiss against the side of his face, intimate and heartbreakingly right. “I think so, yeah.”  
  
TJ ran out of words and cynicism, at that.  
  
He took Johnny’s hand. He couldn’t think of a good reply, so he knelt, going right down on both knees in the entryway of his apartment, and bent his head, and kissed Johnny Storm’s fingers, the back of that hand, the palm.  
  
Johnny made a sound. Tremulous, honored, proud, happy. The other hand came up and cradled TJ’s face, holding him.  
  
The moment shivered and stretched out and broke like caramelized sugar; TJ found himself laughing through the sweetness, and Johnny was grinning, holding out hands. “On your feet, TJ. Jesus. You keep doing that and I’m never gonna leave.”  
  
“Who says I want you to,” TJ retorted, “sir,” and walked him to the door, accepted and gave one last kiss, waved. “I’ll watch you on tv.”  
  
Johnny yelled back, “You’d better!” and threw him a thumbs-up as the elevator doors closed.  
  
TJ shut his own apartment door, and wanted to jump up and down with wild champagne-bubble stardust delight. No one was around, so he did, hugging himself, grinning, foolish and loving it.  
  
He petted the wonderful armadillo. He sat at his piano and played a fragment or two of Stravinsky. He felt like a collection of rainbows: color erupting in an arc toward the sky. He couldn’t quite settle down, distracted by brilliant hues.  
  
He opened up his laptop. He answered one or two emails from his club’s business manager, signing off on new hires and budget projections for the rooftop patio expansion. Maybe he could take Johnny up to that rooftop before it officially opened. A private space strung with lights for the two of them.  
  
He lost himself in daydreams for a while.  
  
He drank some water. He managed more bread and cheese around lunchtime and sent Johnny a picture. Johnny texted back shortly after: _good timing, just landed, that’s good, baby, I’m proud of you_.  
  
He tried to answer a few more emails, but his head was spinning pleasantly, after that.  
  
He showered. Pulled himself together. Work. Right. He had to sign off on a few design decisions. He had to make plans. He had to text his mother’s event organizer and inform her that he’d be bringing a date.  
  
He ended up on the Baxter Foundation website. Reading up on the charity donations, the funding for science camps for kids. Good causes. And broke, according to Johnny.  
  
Who’d left spreadsheets and financial records downloaded onto his laptop. He opened one, idly.  
  
He didn’t actually work for the Storm-Richards family. He’d been serious about every last one of those reasons he couldn’t. He couldn’t help anyone.  
  
Three hours later he sent an email to Johnny: _So the IRS owes you money. I’m going to make a new account for you and have them send it there. I mean like a fucking ton of money, seriously, this’ll help. Not enough to fix everything, but some. Tell me what password you want._  
  
_OH MY GOD_ Johnny sent back. _GETTING READY FOR INTERVIEW NOW BUT OH MY GOD TJ YOU’RE AMAZING TALK MORE LATER BUT <333 ALSO MAYBE ARMADILLO? PASSWORD._ Plus a picture of himself, snapshot taken in a make-up chair, side-eying a powder-puff.  
  
_I like it,_ TJ sent back, leaving the pronoun ambiguous: password, Johnny, the powder-puff; and went off to call a man he’d once done cocaine with in the back room of a D.C. nightclub, a man who happened to be quite high up in the IRS chain of command and would not want this memory made public. The Baxter Foundation should be somewhat less impoverished by the end of the night.  
  
He came sprinting back into the bedroom with two minutes to spare. He grabbed the television remote.  
  
Lying on his happily-broken-in sheets, he watched the talk show host bumble through his intro. News, movies and bad puns, celebrity scandals. The obligatory politics, and the even more obligatory Hammond family joke, this one about how his mother’d do well at handling Congress, with her experience keeping unruly children in line.  
  
He even laughed. Why not? The delivery worked.  
  
Johnny Storm was the evening’s first guest. He ran out of the wings to a jazz fanfare and a roof-rattling cheer. The audience whistled and cheered; Johnny, in a flashy blue suit, blew kisses.  
  
TJ smiled.  
  
The host began with questions about Johnny’s recent round of stunt jumps, about the danger, about the criss-crossing of the country for shows: “Don’t you ever get tired of throwing yourself into mortal peril, sir?”  
  
Johnny laughed. Answered no. Answered that the money raised all went to charities: to the groups supported by the Baxter Foundation, to children’s arts and literacy and science-learning programs.  
  
“Yes,” the host agreed, “but last year you set yourself on fire while riding a motorcycle over a monster truck.”  
  
“Well,” Johnny said. “Someone has to be the hot one.”  
  
The crowd bubbled over with appreciation.  
  
“About that,” the host said, cheerful. “Does it ever just get exhausting? I mean, your sister’s got a PhD, your brother-in-law’s got two PhDs, their best friend’s an experimental test pilot with an engineering background, do you ever get sick of constantly being the sexy attractive one in the family, or is that just _fantastic_?”  
  
And maybe only TJ saw the flicker in Johnny’s eyes. Maybe other people, watching, did; he did not know. But he saw it.  
  
“Nah,” Johnny answered. Easily, readily. “Come on, I’ve got the easy job, I just have to look pretty, right?”  
  
“It must be such a hardship having beautiful people throw themselves at you. The motorcycle, the bad boy image, the charity work—how many models do you have in your contact list?”  
  
Johnny’s smile stayed in place. It was a veteran of public appearances. “None. I lost my phone a while back. Lost ’em all.”  
  
“I’m sure our audience would help you out with building up some numbers.”  
  
“Not really looking anymore,” Johnny said, “but thanks.”  
  
The host, scenting story, pounced. “Someone special? Something new?”  
  
Johnny hesitated for the first time. “Pretty new, yeah. But…yeah. Special.”  
  
“Can we have a name?”  
  
“We haven’t talked about going public—”  
  
“At least tell us if we should be thinking man, woman, both, neither, or alien.”  
  
“He’s definitely a guy,” Johnny said. “He’s—he makes me feel like I can be a better person. Like a better me. And he deserves the best I can give. That’s all you get, sorry.”  
  
The audience cooed. The host made heart’s-eyes at him, exaggerated. “Johnny Storm, closet romantic.”  
  
“If you want.”  
  
TJ grabbed a pillow. Hugged it to his chest. Put a hand over his mouth: trembling with lightness.  
  
“Does ‘the best you can give’ include certain very impressive body parts? There have been rumors.”  
  
“They are not exaggerated,” Johnny drawled, back to lazy teasing despite lingering irritation in blue eyes. TJ laughed, adored him, adored the world. He picked up his phone. Texted, even though Johnny wouldn’t see it yet, _I appreciate your impressive parts._  
  
The host chatted about balls, at this point: Johnny having them, performing death-defying leaps, coming out as bisexual. Johnny snickered, ran with the joke, offered to prove the truth of certain rumors about body parts on the spot. The crowd cheered. And the interview cut to commercial.  
  
TJ wanted to text again. He did not know what he’d say; he did not want to be too needy. Johnny would see his earlier message, he decided.  
  
He felt like smiling more, but he put the phone down.  
  
Johnny did not reply.  
  
Johnny was no doubt busy. Socializing. Other guests. Some sort of afterparty.  
  
TJ left his phone, wandered into his kitchen, went back for the phone, made coffee.  
  
Johnny’d read his message, he noticed.  
  
He took a sip of coffee. It burned his tongue. The evening pooled in obsidian black beyond open windows; he closed the curtains to block out the shrouds.  
  
Johnny answered. _Nice to be appreciated_ , with a winking face. _Call you later?_  
  
TJ started one reply, deleted it. _When you get a chance. I’ll just be here naked in bed keeping myself busy._  
  
_Not fair, I’m in public! Stay naked and stay warm and don’t come until I let you. Wait for me to call._  
  
TJ typed the _yes, sir,_ decided that this felt weird not in person, decided that _yes_ by itself felt lonely, went with _yes, Johnny_.  
  
Johnny sent him a heart and a thumbs-up. TJ figured this did not require a response, but his fingertips were warmer, and places inside had gotten warmer too.  
  
He finished off the coffee. He wasn’t very hungry, but he thought Johnny would want to know he’d eaten something; he had a slice of leftover pizza, one of three.  
  
He watched a few of Johnny’s old stunt-rider shows on YouTube. He watched Johnny soar through the sky on a motorbike, jumping across platforms, from cliffs, through hoops. He wondered whether Johnny could someday in the future give up that daily daring of life and death, that crazy rush of adrenaline. Johnny Storm was very, very good; not the best in the world, he’d started too late and liked partying too much, but talented, recognized, famous, burning bright.  
  
He wondered what Johnny Storm saw, looking at TJ Hammond.  
  
He wondered what he, himself, would give up for Johnny, and if he’d ever be the person who asked the storm to come home to stay. He’d wanted to.  
  
He thought: what do you think this is?  
  
He thought: I don’t know, but he makes me smile. He said I make him happy, just now.  
  
Johnny _hadn’t_ said that exactly. Like a better person, instead. Johnny probably liked that feeling.  
  
This was not the same as liking TJ.  
  
He looked at the heart in Johnny’s last message. He looked at his piano. His shoulders remembered the warmth of Johnny’s hands coming to rest atop them.  
  
Johnny did not call. TJ, familiar with post-interview drinks and dinners and socialization, mentally shrugged and put on the next Indiana Jones movie. Johnny’d told him to wait; he would.  
  
He put on the third movie.  
  
He watched a few more of Johnny’s old interviews, of Storm-Richards family interviews, online.  
  
He tried to read a book about the history of prostitution in Washington D.C., mostly so that he could ponder becoming one out loud and scandalize his father; the book was fairly interesting, full of historical anecdotes and trivia and statistics, but he couldn’t seem to focus.  
  
To his own surprise, he fell asleep. He awoke with heart pounding and grabbed his phone.  
  
Two-thirty. In the morning. No missed calls or messages.  
  
Oh, he thought, not shaping any other thought after that. Deliberately so.  
  
He huddled down into blankets and brought the book for company so he wouldn’t watch the phone.  
  
Two forty-five. Two fifty-five. Three o’clock. And two minutes.  
  
His phone buzzed. He dove for it.  
  
His world came crashing down, as he sat in a tangle of sheets and comforter and lamplight. In a tangle of Johnny’s drunken voice on the line.  
  
“TJ! Baby!”  
  
Too familiar; oh god, too familiar. The cheerful lurching, the not-yet-slurred exuberant speech. No, his heart pleaded. Please don’t have done this. Not when you know I—  
  
He didn’t reply. Johnny, being at the animated careless stage of tipsiness, barreled ahead. “I was thinking about you! About your smile! Such a fuckin’…happy smile, I just want to make you smile all the time, y’know? So I was thinking about you!”  
  
“Yes,” TJ said, “you’ve said so.”  
  
“I’m at this bar!” Shouting into the speaker, on that end. Music, heavy bass, thumping and thundering. Cacophonous voices. “They wanted to take us out! The guests! But, like, anyway, I wanted you to know I was thinking of you, because it’s an awesome bar and you’re awesome and everything’s awesome around you!”  
  
TJ smiled, through the piercing pain.  
  
“Dude,” Johnny went on, babbling, intoxicated, “so I’m drinking this thing, it tastes like cinnamon, it’s got little, like, flecks of gold in it, how cool is that, have you ever tried it? You should try it. It’s all…special. Expensive. Like you.”  
  
“I’ve tried it.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’ve—never mind. Do you have a ride home?”  
  
“What? Oh, yeah, sure, someone’s got…a friend, or something…” Very earnest, close to the phone: “The interview. You know the interview? I meant you.”  
  
“You weren’t exactly subtle.”  
  
With the injured protest of the drunk: “I thought I was!”  
  
“Then…you thought so. I should—”  
  
“TJ?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I don’t like interviews.” TJ could picture big blue eyes, inebriated and honest, confessing secrets no one’d ever guess of the reckless youngest Storm. “I mean, I don’t _not_ like interviews. I love interviews. I love people! But he called me the pretty one.”  
  
“He doesn’t know you.” One more twist of that stiletto, poignant and private. _He_ knew Johnny. And evidently Johnny’d needed to cope via alcohol and drunk-dialing rambles. “You thought of me. Thank you.”  
  
Johnny, being praised for kindness instead of shallowness, audibly beamed. “You’re so good. Tellin’ me…you know…what you mean. What I need. To hear! You tell me what I need to hear. How d’you always know?”  
  
“You’re a good person,” TJ said. It was true. “It’s three in the morning, and I’m going to go back to bed, okay?”  
  
“Wait! Wait, I was gonna…if you wanted…y’know…” Johnny’s voice lowered, not even close to a whisper, carried on far-off alcohol cinnamon fumes. “Let me get you off?”  
  
“I think that’s…not a good idea.”  
  
“Why not? You like it and I like it and I like you and—and you like it!”  
  
“One, you’re in public. At a bar. Two, it’s three in the morning. And three, you won’t remember this when you wake up and I—” And I what, he wondered, cutting himself off.  
  
And I want to remember every moment with you, he thought. I want you to remember. I want you to _want_ to remember every moment. And I also remember how appealing oblivion can be when reality keeps raking claws down every nerve. And I wanted—  
  
Whatever he had wanted did not matter. This was what was, here and now.  
  
“And I don’t do drunken booty calls anymore,” he said. “Call me in the morning.”  
  
“Not _anymore_.” Johnny’s voice slurred, lurched, flung out tipsy hands to catch itself. “That means you did before! And that’s unfair! I don’t get at least one booty call from my super-sexy boyfriend?”  
  
“I’m your boyfriend?”  
  
“Aren’t you? Didn’t you want—I want you to be!”  
  
“You never asked.” He thought: I would have said yes. “We can talk about it in the morning, all right?”  
  
“Three am,” Johnny said, with the dead-on pedantry of the drunk. “Morning.”  
  
“Later in the morning. Go back to your hotel. Drink some water. Drink a lot of water. Go to bed, Johnny.” He knew he wouldn’t sleep. He sat up, hugging the closest pillow against his chest, which hurt.  
  
Johnny persisted. “I want to make you feel good, baby. Can I?”  
  
“I’ll feel good if you’ll go back to your hotel. Text me when you get there.”  
  
“And then I can get you off? Tell you how good you are, how smart, how gorgeous…how much I love the way you smile when you’re thinking of something, y’know, funny…I love that you’re funny. And smart. And sexy! Did I say sexy? The way you look when you—”  
  
“I’m hanging up on you. Go home.” Short sentences. Nothing longer would hold the illusion.  
  
“Ohhh,” Johnny said, in the tones of someone making a discovery, “did you want to give the orders? You’re sexy when you tell me what to do. I mean, I like taking care of you, but we can try it with you in charge.”  
  
“No. Text me so I know you made it back.”  
  
“If I text you can we have phone sex?”  
  
“Fine.” It wouldn’t happen, one way or the other. But Johnny could leave the bar and any potential highly public regrets. “I’m going back to sleep. For now, right, yes, phone sex after you text me.”  
  
“Okay!”  
  
“Okay—”  
  
“Okay! Ten minutes! I swear! And—and I want you naked! In bed! So I can tell you things!”  
  
“Ten minutes,” TJ agreed, hanging up; sitting with back against the headboard and knees bent, he looked into space for a moment, into the shadows and shapes of his room and his so-new furnishings. His eyes burned, but he did not cry. No point.  
  
Johnny texted precisely nine minutes and fifty-three seconds later: a picture of himself in a hotel room, shirtless, eyes half-lidded, smiling sloppily. _Okay I’m back! Tell me what you want!_  
  
_Drink water._  
  
_Okay!_ One more picture, a water glass by the bed. _Happy? I like it when you’re happy TJ_ plus a string of smiling faces.  
  
_Thank you._  
  
This time Johnny called. “You said I could!”  
  
“I did. Are you in bed?”  
  
“Yeah! Are you hard, baby?”  
  
Not remotely. “Sure. You want me to talk to you? Phone sex?”  
  
“You like it when I talk to you. I can totally talk to you!”  
  
Morbid curiosity won out for a second. “Fine. Try.”  
  
“You…um…oh! Can you play with your nipples? Said you liked that. Play with them, baby.”  
  
He might as well; to his annoyance, the order in Johnny’s voice had slithered down to his cock, which wasn’t at full-mast but was having some sort of half-hearted conditioned response. “What do you want me to do?”  
  
“Come on, you know…y’know, you know what I mean. You always do. ’s so good.”  
  
TJ looked at his own hand on his own chest. Stopped even trying. Bit his lip. Tasted blood.  
  
“TJ Hammond,” Johnny slurred. “Sometimes I can’t even believe…I mean, TJ fucking Hammond. You. And me. And you’re you and that’s…’s incredible…’re you feelin’ good, baby, wanna make you…feel so good…”  
  
“Are you _asleep?_ ”  
  
Yes. Snoring on the other end. Not loud but decisive and dead to the world.  
  
TJ said Johnny’s name, just once, and ended the call.  
  
He did not cry even then. He did not know why he didn’t. Too numb. Unreal.  
  
He got out of bed, the bed they’d laughed in. He walked barefoot into his living room, into his kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, gazed at contents without seeing them.  
  
He could go back to bed and sleep and stay warm. He could call Don; Don would answer because sponsors had to. He could call Douglas; his twin would answer because messes had to be cleaned up. He could go downstairs and find a certain nonstop party and a certain old friend and he could take what was pressed into his hand. He could go downstairs and find an all-night convenience store and buy the first bottle that he saw. He could stand on a street corner or outside a club, in the night. Prostitutes of Washington D.C.  
  
He hadn’t closed the fridge. He was shivering, he noticed with surprise.  
  
He took out a bottle of water. He shut the fridge. He went back into the bedroom, took the comforter off the bed, went back to his living room, and curled up into a very small ball of cold limbs on his sofa and shut his eyes.  
  
He woke to the sound of his phone ringing. He tried to move, winced as dazzling pain shot through stiff muscles, blinked away blurriness and sunlight. Golden rays streamed across his eyes; blinded, he couldn’t find the source of the noise.  
  
The phone went quiet, then rang again.  
  
TJ kicked ineffectively at blankets, failed to extricate himself, cringed as electronics thumped to the floor, lunged over the side of the sofa. “Hello?”  
  
“Oh thank god—TJ—” Johnny sounded awful: sick and scared. “I’ve been calling—you didn’t answer—”  
  
“What?” He rubbed eyes. Checked the time. Almost eleven. And, yes, he had multiple missed calls from Johnny Storm. “I was asleep…I think, anyway…”  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“Last night—” Johnny made a terrible small sound: someone trying to swallow down panic and pain. “I called you—what did I tell you to do? Did I—what did I do to you?”  
  
“Nothing,” TJ said. True. He couldn’t seem to inhale deeply enough. Odd. “You didn’t do anything.”  
  
“Oh no,” Johnny choked out, stumbling. “No, I did, I can hear—don’t lie to me, TJ, please, what did I do to you? Did you—are you hurt? You didn’t—get hurt—” His voice held the memory of that confession. Hospital rooms and restraints and round-the-clock self-harm oversight: they’d thought I’d try again, TJ’d told him once.  
  
“Nothing. You told me not to get myself off and to wait for you. You called. You fell asleep. You didn’t do anything.”  
  
“I remember…telling you to…”  
  
“To play with my nipples.”  
  
“You didn’t want to,” Johnny realized. “You said we could try but you didn’t want to—god, I made you—I fucking made you—”  
  
“No,” TJ said. “Don’t. You didn’t. I could’ve hung up on you. I didn’t. Then or the first time. You’re okay.”  
  
“No.” Johnny’s voice shook. “I said—shit, what’d I even say, that first time—I asked you if you ever tried drinking—oh no, no, god.”  
  
“It’s okay.” Breathe, breathe, don’t die.  
  
“It’s not okay!”  
  
“No. Or maybe. Or maybe we need some time. Off.”  
  
Johnny had already started to apologize. The apology crumpled into nothing.  
  
“I’m not mad at you,” TJ said. He wasn’t. Johnny Storm was elemental. “I’m just…I don’t know if this is good. For me.”  
  
Johnny’s curses came self-directed and unexpectedly harsh. “ _Are you all right?”_  
  
“Enough. But I think we should slow down.” Foot in front of foot. Cracking ice. Cracking heart.  
  
“TJ—oh god—are you breaking up with me, are we—I can change, I can grow up, I can totally do that, please—”  
  
“I’m not saying stop. I just think. Maybe we shouldn’t. Right now.”  
  
“Please.” Crevices opening between words. “I’m so sorry, god, I’m so fucking sorry, please let me try—I’ll fix it, I’ll do anything, I swear, please just tell me what to do, how to make this right for you—”  
  
“It’s not you.”  
  
“Don’t say it,” Johnny whispered, voice splintering. “Not you, not that.”  
  
“You’re you,” TJ said. “Who you are.”  
  
“You answered the phone,” Johnny said, hollow. “When I called. Last night. And you still answered this morning. I can’t make this right. Can I? I can’t.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“I said I’d take care of you…” The words shriveled and fell. Autumn leaves on dry ground.  
  
“I think,” TJ said, “I might need to take care of myself. For a while.”  
  
Johnny gulped down a painful-sounding sob. “Guess you’ll be better at that than I was…”  
  
“No one could be.” He closed his eyes, touched fingers to the spot between them. His head hurt. ““I meant what I said. I don’t know. Maybe. I need to not see you. I asked you if we could slow down and you asked me to tell you how to change.”  
  
Johnny was crying again, but got out, accepting, “I understand.”  
  
The phone shook. No. He was shaking. “Not forever. Just for—you’re still my date. To Mom’s celebration event.”  
  
Johnny didn’t exactly stop crying, but the sound floundered into a startled hiccup.  
  
TJ said, hastily, “Six days. You need a better suit. You—oh, just come over. Before the party. I’ll find you something.”  
  
“TJ…I thought…”  
  
“I’m trying not to.” The hurt spread out further. Incandescent black flashed behind his eyes. “I don’t want to decide anything yet.”  
  
“Anything you want,” Johnny breathed, incredulous.  
  
“I don’t know yet. What I want.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “I know that doesn’t matter. I know. I just—I’m sorry, TJ. I hurt you and I’m sorry.”  
  
“It matters,” TJ said, “that you said it. I know one thing I want, I think.”  
  
Johnny waited, audibly shivering with hopeless hope.  
  
“I want you,” TJ told him. “I don’t want to never see you again. I want you. If you want to.”  
  
“Always,” Johnny vowed. “God, TJ—always.”  
  
“Then give me six days. Five and a half. Come over the morning before the party. And we’ll talk. Then.”  
  
“Thank you.” Johnny exhaled. “Thank you.” His shock and disbelief and sheer gratitude echoed over the connection; TJ hesitated, squinted into a sunbeam, was confused. He didn’t understand why Johnny Storm would sound like a man reprieved from execution and given back breath and life, on only the strength of TJ Hammond’s words.  
  
“I’ll give you space,” Johnny said. “I swear. I swear I will. But can I—I guess I don’t have the right to—but can I ask? Are you okay? Will you…be warm enough?”  
  
“I’ve got a blanket,” TJ said. He sat crosslegged on his couch; he tilted his face into the sunlight, with closed eyes. “I’ll call you if I need to. I promise.”  
  
“You don’t have to. I mean I want that, I want you to, so much, I want—but if you—if someone else would be—”  
  
“I’ll call _you_ ,” TJ said, “if I need someone.”  
  
“Oh,” Johnny said, softly, hearing.  
  
“I’ll see you in five days.”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said. “Thank you. For—just thank you.”  
  
“I’m hanging up,” TJ said, and then he said breathlessly, “No, don’t—you said you were sorry, you apologized—to _me_ —you said you’d still be here, you’d wait for me if I asked, you’ll come to a party with me because I asked for that, so thank you, I want you, I always want you, okay, I’m going now, bye,” and hung up.  
  
Morning sunshine poured through his hair. He took a deep breath and dropped his face into his hands.  
  
He did cry, then, but he felt better for it: hollowed out and hurting and aimless, but the hurt was a clean one, and he was alive and sitting on his couch; he felt lighter inside.


	6. ev’ry step with caution feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which TJ Hammond makes pancakes and decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the first half of the next chapter, but then that chapter got REALLY long, so...I have cut it in two.
> 
> Minor warnings for: discussion of food-related issues, as per Anne and the show; discussion of addiction, recovery. No actual sex in this chapter, though there will be in the next!

That first morning, he did not know what to do.   
  
Five days’ worth of silence, he thought. Five days. And a half.  
  
He went back to bed after hanging up the phone. He thought he could: he could sleep in that bed with the memory of Johnny’s voice beside him. He cried a little more, on and off.  
  
He stopped when his mother called to inform him, tone brimming over with enthusiasm, that they’d be dedicating a new rehabilitation clinic right downtown, specializing in troubled youth with addiction histories, making a point of openness to _all_ genders and _all_ sexualities, and would he please come down the next day and stand with the family?  
  
“You mean be your political capital,” TJ said. “Look at me, I’m a symbol. Relatable yet shiny with celebrity. I’m a Lifetime movie.”  
  
“TJ,” his mother sighed. “We thought it would be a nice gesture. We thought—”  
  
“I know,” he said. “I’ll come.”  
  
“You will?”  
  
“I’ll see you there.”  
  
He stood on the front steps at nine in the morning, the next day, wearing a blue suit and a performance-art smile. The new facility sparkled and gleamed: white and brick and classical, dressed up in pillars and a fancy name, optimistic.  
  
His mother was making some sort of speech about how grateful they were to the rehabilitation center that’d helped her son, and dedicating this new one in appreciation, and giving back, and endowments. Douglas beamed. Bud’s chest inflated so hugely that TJ contemplated the odds of his father floating away like a balloon.  
  
He noticed a small spot of paint on the brickwork by his left shoe. White from the pillars or the trim around the door, perhaps. It shone very small, almost unnoticeable, pale against dark red steps. Imperfect; unremarked. He caught his mouth smiling at it.  
  
Reporters asked for his comments after, of course. He declined, sunshine beating down on his head, and got into the car. His father suggested they all have lunch; Douglas claimed to have a meeting with the White House chief of staff, Anne had a hairstylist appointment, and Elaine looked expectantly at TJ.  
  
“I’m not hungry,” he said. “You think I would be, after being back in a place like this?” The car dropped him off outside his apartment building, and the Secret Service followed him home and took up stations outside the door.  
  
He shut the door and kicked off his shoes. He shivered, cold under his expensive suit; he yanked it off and pulled on pajama pants and his fuzzy-kitten shirt, the one with the long sleeves.   
  
He ignored a text from his twin that said: _Tell me if you need me to come over._  
  
He ignored the second text as well: _It’s a boring meeting anyway, even you’d be more fun_. He assumed this was making some sort of obscure point; they didn’t have a mutually teasing relationship, and Doug didn’t consider him fun.  
  
He wished suddenly that he hadn’t said the last few words, in the car. His mother’d flinched. And they’d been spoken as a reflex; they hadn’t been true.  
  
He hadn’t been nervous or scared or reminded of unpleasant experiences. Rehab hadn’t been _pleasant_ , but it’d been necessary. And he was alive.   
  
And he had, for better or worse, met Johnny Storm, and relearned how to smile.  
  
He called Don to check in. His sponsor noticed the quietness, but only asked whether he’d been taking time for self-care lately. Don didn’t push; TJ appreciated that. He said, “You’re good at this, you know.”  
  
“Are you _sure_ you’re okay, kiddo?”  
  
“Yeah,” TJ said, standing in his kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear. He might be hungry, he thought. “I think I am.”  
  
He wasn’t sure what to eat, now that he wanted to eat, now that he was off the phone. Not pizza, not sandwich-related bread and meat and cheese, not reminders of—  
  
Eggs were out because he thought of Douglas and family brunch. Cereal was a possibility, but he’d meant it when he’d told Johnny he didn’t like milk. The texture, he recalled saying; he felt the lightness on his lips at the memory of Johnny’s baffled reaction.  
  
Breakfast food, he thought. Bacon. Coffee. Waffles. Pancakes. Pancakes?  
  
He put on jeans and went to the store.  
  
The first attempt at making food was an unmitigated disaster. Underdone, overdone, everything in between; and he got batter on the stove. He eyed the stove and his only pan. The pan looked back apologetically, indicating that it was doing its best and it didn’t blame him; neither of them had done this before.  
  
The second attempt went better. Three were at least edible.  
  
The third attempt came out very nearly good. His apartment smelled like pancakes and syrup, and his stomach protested that it was actually full because he’d been taste-testing, and his fingers were warm and maybe a little pink in one spot from touching a hot pan accidentally, and he felt…  
  
Accomplished, he thought, and flopped down on his couch, triumphant.  
  
He turned on the Food Network, to see if anyone on _there_ was making pancakes. He ended up watching a whole show about the joys of fresh corn and all the wonders one could do with it.  
  
He thought about buying corn. Don, dedicated sponsor and purveyor of mutant-sized zucchini, might have some.  
  
He spent the afternoon looking up ingredients he could add to pancakes.  
  
He thought of Johnny Storm again when eating blueberry-chocolate-chip-banana fluffiness; he thought of Johnny Storm when he brushed his teeth, when he got into bed, when he put on thick socks so his toes wouldn’t be cold.  
  
He did not call or text—he wasn’t sure he could get back on that sublime and glorious high-wire just yet—but he found that he liked thinking of Johnny, having that presence around. He could call, if he needed to. Johnny would be there.  
  
He believed that. With his entire heart.  
  
Day two, and he woke up and ate leftover pancakes and went out into his living room—maybe to pick up a book, maybe to find a pen for a grocery list—and froze, blindsided by the sight of his open piano.  
  
He’d left it open. When Johnny’d touched him. When he’d—  
  
He swallowed hard, determinedly.  
  
He ran a hand over the unpolished top of the instrument. He’d played this one for Johnny. With Johnny at his back.  
  
He went and found his phone. He still had the number for the moving company. They’d taken his furniture before.  
  
At the glittering new rehabilitation clinic, he explained to the rather surprised woman in charge that he was indeed donating a piano, and he thought that someone might like it; he thought that someone, trying to recover, might find a safe haven in notes and chords. He’d rescued that piano once.   
  
He thought: let it rescue someone else. Whoever that might be.  
  
He paused, though, before leaving. He ran fingertips over the keys.  
  
He found himself back the next day, wandering up to a side entrance under a patchwork sky of clouds and blue. He waved at the receptionist.  
  
He found his piano, perched now by a big wide window in a big wide unassuming common room filled with soft cushions and professionally competent staff. He sat down.  
  
The first time he played for a few minutes, half an hour, and then he had to go: his mother was on the phone asking for celebration gala fashion advice.  
  
He came back the next day. And the day after. The staff began smiling at him.   
  
The second time he saw faces peeking over at him. The faces came with identification bracelets and, in some cases, the unfocused shivers of withdrawal. They vanished when they thought he might be looking.  
  
The time after that four of them were sitting on the cushions as Tchaikovsky spilled like holidays into the air. One girl applauded, shyly.  
  
As he left the head nurse came up, corkscrew dark curls bouncing in a sunburst explosion around her head; her hand reached out to rest on his arm. TJ stopped.  
  
“You’re making them smile,” she said.  
  
He shrugged.  
  
“Would you consider giving lessons?”  
  
He blinked. She hadn’t moved the hand.  
  
The nurse sighed. “I know you’re busy, of course. It was just an idea.”  
  
“I…” TJ said. “I don’t know how to teach. Anyone. But. You think they’d want to?”  
  
“Honey.” She patted his shoulder. “Are you kidding? You’re an inspiration.”  
  
TJ snorted.  
  
The nurse made a cheerful face at him. “ _Not_ ’cause you’re perfect, sweetie. ’Cause you keep getting up when you fall. And you can play that thing like an angel would.”  
  
TJ said, “I could…try?”  
  
They settled on Wednesday afternoons, to start.  
  
He saw Johnny Storm’s name come up in the news: the internet, celebrity sites, even mainstream media. Johnny was keeping busy. Was visibly recommitting himself to the Baxter Foundation, hiring a new young-but-brilliant financial manager, promising that scholarships to bright students would continue, hosting a Kids Invent! day at the Baxter Lab. TJ watched footage of Johnny being amazed by a thirteen-year-old girl’s working prototype hoverboard, and felt his chest ache strangely: with love, he guessed, if he were to put a name to it.  
  
Johnny Storm: Turning Over A New Leaf? asked the headlines. Johnny Storm Settling Down?  
  
Johnny Storm Attends Library Fundraiser. Johnny Storm Donates First Stunt Bike To Firefighters Of New York Charity Auction.   
  
Johnny still went out for dinner most evenings, photos surfacing from all over New York, and spent one late night at a friend’s birthday party—one of his stunt-rider crew, not a celebrity, and in all the social-media snapshots Johnny looked the most sober of the group. Beers littered on the table, but Johnny’s grin was real, not alcohol-sloppy.  
  
Johnny evidently declared to one reporter that he’d never give up his motorcycle, no matter what; and TJ sighed and smiled, and then read a bit further in the article, over experimental apple-cinnamon pancakes topped with spiced-apple preserves. He set down his fork. Bite uneaten on it.  
  
Johnny Storm might, however, the next paragraph went on, hang up the stunt act.  
  
Not immediately and not without some charity or special-event exceptions, but he was getting older, he said, and figuring out some things. What he really wanted. A place he could come home to, not living on a road and taking every chance he could.   
  
How to be there for a person, not just words but meaning it, every day.   
  
How to be there for a person he could be worthy of.  
  
A person? the reporter asked. The same person you mentioned in another interview, a few days ago?  
  
Johnny Storm only shrugged, smiling, and—according to the article—changed the topic of conversation.  
  
I love you, TJ thought. You’re worth everything.  
  
He almost called. He didn’t, but he almost did.  
  
Douglas called once. Twice. He didn’t answer.  
  
His mother called. He didn’t answer.  
  
That afternoon, as he surfaced from a modern interpretation of a kaleidoscope through piano-wire at sundown, he caught a glint of light, of motion. Outside the clinic’s window. In the bushes.  
  
He started to get up; he stopped, said to the assembled audience of patients and staff, “Sorry, I just—I’ll be right back—” and ran out the side door.  
  
He wasn’t in the best shape, but vastly better than he’d been at the lowest of his downward spiral, and better than the chubby balding photographer who tried to get away. The man did not expect TJ Hammond to climb over the side gate and appear in front of him at the clinic’s steps. Two Secret Service members materialized behind him for good measure.  
  
“Don’t,” TJ said. “Not here. Not them.”  
  
“You’re the story, not them.” The man shuffled feet, indignant and guilty. “Back in rehab, huh? Sucks. But, hey, it _is_ a story.”  
  
“I’m not,” TJ said. “Whoever you think I am. I’m not. Please.”  
  
“I’ve gotta pay the bills, man.” The photographer shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy. “ ’s my job.”  
  
TJ crossed arms. Balanced a shoulder on the column beside steps, casual. “At least tell the _right_ story.”  
  
“Come on, I’ve got child support!”  
  
TJ looked away: at the sunset, at the dying light, at the edge of the building that shaped a refuge for men and women trying to save themselves. “Fine. Go on. Print whatever you want. I don’t care.”  
  
“You—” The man hesitated. “You really were just playing? Like, volunteer work?”  
  
TJ shrugged, and went back inside.  
  
Later that night the article appeared on the internet, naturally. TJ Hammond In Rehab Again, it trumpeted. But it added: Not For The Reason You Think—He’s Volunteering!  
  
TJ did not find it funny, and was not proud. But his mouth did that strange upward quirk. The feeling he’d sometimes had with—  
  
The feeling that he thought he liked, maybe, hidden under his heart.  
  
The night was hard despite that, or maybe because of it.  
  
He knew Johnny’d see the article. He did not know what Johnny would think. Johnny might be pleased with him. He hoped so; that wasn’t why he’d done it, but he hoped so.  
  
Johnny’d been faithful about giving him space. No contact. As promised. Not even an attempt.  
  
TJ wanted to call him. Wanted to hear that voice. Wanted to hear Johnny say it: I’m proud of you, so good, so good for me, always mine.  
  
One day to go. He closed his laptop. He glanced sideways at his phone.   
  
He could make pineapple-and-walnut pancakes for Johnny, just possibly, if he bought walnuts. Johnny liked pineapple on pizza—with bacon—and might like that. He might need to text Johnny and find out whether walnuts were likeable.   
  
No. Space.  
  
Maybe he didn’t need space.  
  
Maybe he didn’t need as much space as he’d thought. Maybe he’d just needed to learn to make baked goods and be happy that Johnny’d hired a financial manager. He’d gotten an email from the boy: freshly-minted MBA, polite, seeming from the content of the message to know what he was doing. He’d asked about TJ’s new account, the one that’d collected all the refunds from the IRS. TJ’d sent him everything and told him to change the password. The boy’d emailed back to thank him and to say that he couldn’t, because Mr Storm had given instructions to leave it and to in fact change everything else to variations on “armadillo.”  
  
The real-life plastic version bobbled its head at him from the shelf, in greeting.  
  
Temptation, he thought. Johnny’s laugh. Johnny’s hands. Johnny’s heart. So close. One more day.  
  
He glanced at his phone one more time.  
  
It rang.  
  
This startled him badly enough that he almost fell off the couch. The ringtone wasn’t Johnny. It was, however, family. Not a member who tended to call him much.  
  
“TJ,” Anne said, no preamble. “Call your brother.”  
  
“Why? Does he need shoe advice? Oxfords, not brogues.”  
  
“We don’t actually use you for the gay fashion radar. We have a personal stylist. He said you aren’t answering his calls.”  
  
“Your stylist? When did he get my number?”  
  
“Funny,” Anne said, dry as dusty expensive wine. “That’s funny, TJ, honestly, he’s trying to help, and you—”  
  
“I’m an ungrateful sibling and a useless human being. I know.” He drummed restless fingertips over his closed laptop lid. Guilty. “Doug has better things to worry about.”  
  
“He’s distracted, and that’s not good.”  
  
“Ah,” TJ said, “we’re concerned that I’m ruining his political prospects, okay, I think I’ve heard this one before.”  
  
“You’re such an asshole sometimes,” Anne said, in the same ladylike tone she’d use to charm a recalcitrant lobbyist into knuckling under. “You know that, right?”  
  
TJ thought this over, and went with, “You are what you eat.”  
  
“I don’t even know why I bothered to call.”  
  
“I do.” He stopped his fingers from tapping. He sat up more. “You love him. I’m sorry, I’m a dick, I know, it’s sort of a habit. I _am_ sorry. I’ll try to be less me.”  
  
“TJ,” Anne sighed. “It’s not…look, you’re his brother, you’re his _twin_ , for god’s sake. And he still cares about you, and you’re not acting like…well, what he expected you to act like, and he doesn’t know what to do, so answer the phone next time.”  
  
“I’m trying,” TJ said, suddenly brutally honest; Anne must’ve heard the honesty, because she didn’t respond immediately.  
  
After a minute she offered, “I know.”  
  
“I know you know.”  
  
“I meant—we saw that headline. We know what you’re doing. That’s brave.”  
  
TJ stretched one leg out, folded it back up under himself. “Not what I meant. I meant you.”  
  
“You—oh _no_.”  
  
“As an addict and a general fuck-up and a Hammond,” TJ said, “I’m not exactly qualified to give anyone advice. But I can say, um. It does help. To talk to—someone.”  
  
Anne went deadly quiet. Then: “How did you—how long have you known?”  
  
“A while.” He wasn’t even sure when he’d first noticed. One more secret, one more scuff of dirt on the family name. Anne darting off to the restroom immediately after meals. Anne moving untouched food around on her plate at state dinner functions. Anne making elegant unobtrusive excuses to leave in the middle of family brunch and then return. Anne layering on perfume and growing thinner and acting the part of the perfect political wife. Douglas had never realized. “Anyway. If you—”  
  
“You never said.” Her voice wavered between accusatory and astonishedly not. “Why didn’t you—?”  
  
He lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “Not my business.”  
  
“You could have told—”  
  
“I didn’t.”  
  
“I thought you didn’t even like me,” Anne said, over the connection, across the phones.  
  
“I didn’t like anything except the next big high. Don’t take it personally.” He sighed. “And you don’t have to listen to me. Just—I know what this family does to people. I’ve been there. Well. Not exactly there, not the same, but. You don’t have to handle it alone. And also you should throw out that blue blazer, the one with the shoulder pads. Seriously. Not nineteen-eighty-six, no matter what your stylist says about power fashion.”  
  
“TJ,” Anne said.   
  
“Don’t say it.”  
  
“I’ll donate that blazer. Some clothing drive. And…” A favor for a favor, said her tone. A secret for a secret. Hope, perhaps, for hope. “You like him. Johnny Storm. I saw you with him.”  
  
“So you’ve finally decided to ditch Douglas for a hotter motorcycle-riding model. I’m in favor, mind you.”  
  
“I love Doug. And you love him. Johnny, not your brother.”  
  
TJ swallowed hard. Shut both eyes, closing out the world and his barren pale apartment walls. “He’s a fun guy.”  
  
“You laughed,” Anne said, “when you danced with him.”  
  
“Yeah, I do that, I—”  
  
“I remember because I’d never seen you laugh before.” She stopped, took a breath, went on. “All the years I’ve been around, the years I’ve been part of this family. I realized I’d never heard you laugh just because you were happy.”  
  
TJ couldn’t speak.  
  
Anne cleared her throat. “Anyway. At least text Doug, please, he’s worried sick.”  
  
“Really? Mild headache, if that.”  
  
“You’re not the one listening to him rant. Come on, TJ.”  
  
“Fine okay yeah I will,” TJ said, and pulled the phone away to scowl at the screen, then came back. “Tell him I’m alive and he can stop pestering you.”  
  
“He wants to pester _you_.”  
  
“I’ll believe that someday. Okay, I’m getting off the phone, I’ll text him, happy?”  
  
“More so now,” Anne said, hanging up, which TJ recognized as one of his own deflection tactics: end conversation bluntly and painfully before more pain or blunt admission could happen.  
  
He couldn’t offer anyone advice. He could barely hold himself together; the idea that he might be able to help Anne was laughable at best.  
  
Nevertheless: he hoped she’d talk to someone.   
  
Nevertheless: he wanted her to be all right. For Douglas, because his twin looked at her as if she’d hung the stars in the sky, and for Anne herself, who’d called him an asshole and tried to help relieve stress for the man she loved.  
  
He sent Doug a message: _is pineapple a thing that can go in pancakes?_  
  
Two seconds later, speed speaking more loudly than content: _I have no idea. Is this some sort of gay sex metaphor, or are you actually trying to cook?_  
  
_I was trying to bake this morning. Want some lopsided blueberry muffins? Made way too many. Learning curve here._  
  
In the pause he pictured his twin staring in bafflement at the phone, starting and deleting messages: _Are they poisoned or something—? You know how to bake—? Is this a drug metaphor—? Is it a cry for help—? Since when do you even eat—?_  
  
Douglas finally went with _Sure?_  
  
_Okay, then. Just remember you said yes._  
  
_Am I getting like fifty muffins?_  
  
_Maybe fifteen. Warning you now they’re kind of dense._  
  
_Good projectile weapons for dull Cabinet planning meetings?_  
  
TJ let out an amused breath and typed, _Knew you had a wild side. Will take requests if any of your meetings could use battle scones. I don’t actually know how to make scones yet._  
  
_Sounds like a plan. Nice knowing you’ve got my back._  
  
TJ genuinely had no idea what to say to this. He regarded the screen in disbelief. The words refused to change into anything more applicable to himself.   
  
To buy time, he looked up recipes for pineapple pancakes. Then he sent over a picture. _Totally a thing. If you liked pineapple, but only sort of, like on pizza, like more savory, would you like this?_  
  
_Assuming we’re talking about Johnny Storm here, I think he’d eat whatever you put in front of him._  
  
TJ raised eyebrows, bit a rueful lip, smirked, started typing. Hadn’t finished when—  
  
_OH GOD PLEASE LET ME REPHRASE THAT._  
  
_No, sorry. Keeping that one forever._  
  
_Why why why and also Anne says you said something about my shoes??_  
  
_I like her. You should listen about the shoes._ He hesitated before sending the next question. Let his fingers make the decision. _Are you two busy tomorrow? Like around lunchtime?_  
  
_I have a 1 on 1 with Sec of Interior at 12:30 but can reschedule why?_  
  
Douglas was apparently forgoing proper grammar in favor of rapid reassurance of presence. TJ stifled a wince at probable reasons. _Not a big deal, just if you were around I was going to test-drive the pineapple pancake thing._  
  
A few seconds of silence, possibly processing on the other side, happened.  
  
_So…you want us to be your guinea pigs while you practice making pancakes to seduce Johnny Storm?_  
  
_Well, not if you’d rather seduce the Secretary of the Interior._  
  
_I can be there at 12. Anne says she can come too._  
  
_Sounds good,_ TJ wrote back, _see you then, go…enjoy your innuendo_ , and Douglas sent him back a scandalized angel face followed by a small winking one and a thumbs-up, which was frankly just a tiny bit disturbing with regard to his brother’s married sex life. And TJ Hammond knew disturbing.  
  
He decided that one didn’t need a response.  
  
He looked at the screen again. He wondered whether this was what having a brother felt like; he wondered whether they’d had something like this, once, a very long time ago.  
  
He wondered that again the next day, when Douglas and Anne showed up with sparkling lemon-flavored water and fresh oranges and tentative smiles. TJ threw a muffin at his twin in greeting; Doug, considerably startled but not unwilling, caught it.  
  
Pancakes-for-lunch went well, on the whole.  
  
All three of them remained perceptibly careful, not wanting to overturn a newly-righted raft in deep waters; but the pineapple experiment worked out, even more so when he made a messy but delicious orange-infused syrup to play with, and they managed to talk about baked goods and White House gardens and sustainable food movements and suggestions Doug might make in Cabinet meetings. Douglas did not suggest that he accept any sort of Cabinet or advisory position, but did say, licking syrup off a fork, “Can I have you look over a couple of things? Mom’s thinking about restructuring the executive staff, operational cost-cutting, and you’re better at future projections than I am.”  
  
He said this very casually, as if everyone at the table knew it to be true; TJ only avoided choking on sparkling water because he’d had lots of practice at swallowing.  
  
“I’m not,” he said.  
  
“Yeah, you are. I’m good at detail and strategy, but you see trends before they happen.” Doug cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re the _psychic_ twin.”  
  
“What even,” TJ said, and took away his plate, and thought: why not? “Yeah, sure, why not. If you…need me. Unofficially, though. I’m not—”  
  
“Of course,” his brother agreed, as if assuming as much from the start: TJ could be the pancake chef and financial wizard and flamboyantly independent one, and Douglas could follow their parents into politics and call his twin when in need of help.  
  
In fact that didn’t sound like a bad life, TJ thought; and discovered a hiccup of laughter in his throat.  
  
“Yeah,” he said again, “I can do that. You’ll have to pay me to be your executive consultant, though, and I’m expensive.”  
  
Anne figured out the teasing first and grinned. She’d eaten exactly two pancakes, but she’d caught his eye across the table, and she _had_ eaten them.   
  
“I actually will,” Doug said, catching up to the joke but taking it seriously, “if you keep feeding us like this, deal?”  
  
“Deal,” TJ said, and got up for a minute so they wouldn’t see his face while he got emotions back under control. “Let me give you more weaponized muffins.”  
  
After his family departed—not overstaying their welcome, he noticed; those eggshells again, but he _was_ kind of tired and chose to appreciate rather than resent consideration—he bundled dishes into the dishwasher, scrubbed a pan, and collapsed onto his couch. Adrenaline drained away; he didn’t want to move.  
  
He wanted to lie down and nap. He wanted Johnny’s hand in his hair and the secure floating feeling of being cherished and wanted and told that he’d done well. He dangled a leg over an armrest into a sunbeam.  
  
He did need to know what time Johnny’d be arriving the following day.  
  
He sat up and checked in with his mother’s event planner; official presidential nominations would be announced at the afternoon press conference, followed by the tremendous party. He’d have to be present for the press conference, even with the outcome a foregone conclusion—but he could meet up with Johnny immediately after; he’d have Johnny for the morning before.  
  
Johnny, who’d been so scrupulous about keeping his word, about giving that space. Showing TJ that he could listen and be trusted.  
  
He wrote out _hey I just needed to ask you what time you’d be here tomorrow, and also I just had lunch, I thought you might want to know?_ and then let his fingers hover, and then hit _send_.  
  
Johnny started typing almost instantly, then stopped, then started again. _I was thinking around eleven but whatever works for you? And I do want to know. If you want to tell me._  
  
_Eleven should be fine,_ TJ sent back, which crossed with one more incoming text: _I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me._  
  
_I asked you to be my date, remember? Kind of implies talking._ He shut his eyes, opened them. _I miss you. I think I needed this but I miss you._  
  
_ME TOO. SO MUCH._ And then, _I don’t want to push you so should we stop talking now?_  
  
_Probably. Have a thing anyway. Piano. But I think we’re okay._ They were, he thought. They could be.  
  
_Saw that article. Can I say I’m proud of you? If not then can I say I’m proud to be with you? If I am. If we are. Fuck._  
  
TJ laughed, reading Johnny’s message in Johnny’s voice, alone in his apartment full of sunbeams.  
  
No. Not alone.   
  
He sent back _You can say both._  
  
_How’d I get so lucky?_ Johnny inquired, with a happy face and a heart, because Johnny Storm had no shame about emotions in text form. _I mean that. I seriously don’t know._  
  
_You asked me to dance. I’ll see you tomorrow._  
  
_Totally yes,_ Johnny wrote back, _I’ll be there._


	7. is not my love as good as another's? is not my heart as true as another's?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Johnny comes back, gifts are given and received, and someone unwelcome makes an appearance at a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Porn-with-emotions next chapter. I promise.

“So I thought flowers would be cheesy and romantic,” Johnny said, “but then I thought, well, this is exactly the time for cheesy and romantic, so here.”  
  
Two dozen roses. Huge and crimson. They bloomed outward in bright heartfelt cliché color, and clashed brilliantly with the hallway’s taupe striping. Johnny, having just arrived, had brought the color bursting into life with him; his knock had been nervous, and so had his normally impetuous smile.  
  
TJ took them. They smelled exactly like fresh red roses should, billowy and rich, decadence in his arms.  
  
“Plus I got you a present.” Johnny, leather-jacket clad and freshly shaved and flushed from running with flowers up many stairs, held out a bag. “At first I wasn’t sure what, and then I was at this library fundraiser thing, in New York, and I saw this, and, well.”  
  
TJ, smothered in roses, tried to figure out how to take the bag; Johnny scooped some of the flowers out of overloaded arms. “Too much? Too much.”  
  
“No,” TJ said. “I like it.” He might like cheesy and romantic; he might like those things with Johnny Storm. “Come in. Bring the floral population of the entire city with you.” Opening cupboards at random, he found no vases, but tall cut-glass tumblers, a bowl or two, a few coffee mugs. Roses cavorted all around his kitchen.  
  
“Open this,” Johnny asked hopefully.  
  
“Now that I’m not being smothered in petals, yes.” He accepted the gift. Johnny bit a lip at the words, as if they’d stung more than expected, but said nothing, unusually so.  
  
The gift, clumsily buried in multicolored tissue paper, turned out to be a book. A nineteenth-century book, from the binding and the timeworn gilt and yellowing pages. He turned it over to find the cover. “ _Financial Records and Profits of the London Light Opera, 1880-1890, as compiled by John Silverman and Co., Baker Street, for the Purposes of Investigating the Viability of Comedic Opera Productions Among the London Working Class, Volume One_.”  
  
“So libraries get some really weird book donations,” Johnny said.  
  
TJ looked at the title again, then looked up. “You do realize I’m going to have to read this to you. Cover to cover.”  
  
“I kinda hoped you might,” Johnny said. His eyes were teasing, but they were serious, too.  
  
“Volume one of how many?”  
  
“I have no idea. Think comedic opera was viable among the London working class in 1890?”  
  
“We’re going to find out,” TJ said, and leaned forward and kissed him.   
  
Johnny tasted like roses and coffee and startlement. Tissue-paper crunched between them; the book dug edges into TJ’s chest. Johnny kissed him back, there in the kitchen, surrounded by flowers and the dry sweet scent of old paper; Johnny put a hesitant hand in his hair, and TJ leaned in more.  
  
In a pause for breath, a mutually-agreed unspoken slowdown, he stood in Johnny’s arms, hands resting on Johnny’s shoulders, lightly. “I did appreciate the gesture. What you’ve been doing. I don’t mean just the presents.”  
  
“Yeah.” Johnny exhaled, dropped hands from TJ’s waist, eyed the kitchen floor. “It wasn’t for you. I mean, it was, of course it was, it was all about you. But I needed to know, too.”  
  
TJ echoed his, “Yeah.” Johnny looked up again. Their eyes met, and held.  
  
When Johnny bent to kiss him this time, the world faded into a glimmering ocean. Johnny’s hands were strong and careful and commanding; TJ’s knees wobbled, and Johnny caught him, trailing kisses along his throat. The sensation went straight through him like glass arrows: leaving him transparent and laid bare and shivering with want.  
  
Johnny didn’t push. Stopped the kisses, the caresses; gazed at him, tentative and tender and cautious, feeling the way ahead. TJ wanted more, wanted everything.  
  
Weightless, next inhale trembling in his lungs, he opened _his_ book at random and read, “ ‘In a fortuitous happenstance the members of this Commission chanced upon an East End pub with the improbable name of _Figaro’s Whistle_ , and upon entering discovered that indeed the proprietor had been a Principal Boy upon the stage in his youth, and could be induced under only the mild persuasion of a mug of brown ale to perform—’ ”   
  
Johnny Storm started laughing.  
  
“Looks like the Commission spent most of its budget on brown ale and shepherd’s pie,” TJ said, reading ahead, “at least in this chapter.”  
  
Johnny dove in to land another kiss on his mouth. “Induced to perform what, exactly?”  
  
“Opera. I don’t know where _your_ mind went.”  
  
“Same place yours did just now. But you do like it?” Johnny’s gaze was shy and hopeful, a boy wanting to know he’d picked the right gift, wanting confirmation, bashful about asking.  
  
“I absolutely like it.” TJ put down the book, took the nearest hand, squeezed. Firmly. “Thank you.”  
  
“Um,” Johnny said, blushing now, but happily. “Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah,” TJ purred back at him, stretching the word out into silly lazy seductive confirmation, and Johnny leaned in again, happiness deepening and swelling. And then paused, plainly thinking of something. “Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer.”  
  
“I probably will. So go ahead.” He curled fingers more tightly around Johnny’s.  
  
“Okay.” Johnny glanced to one side: out into the living room, which held one fewer instrument compared to his previous visit. “So…your piano…I did read that article, that you were playing for, um, but I didn’t realize…you gave them yours.” That wasn’t technically a question, but it was one anyway.  
  
“I did.” When he breathed he could taste roses, scarlet and spicy, drenching the air. “I thought I could pick out a new one. A more substantial one. If I’m going to be playing more. I thought you might want to look at models with me.”  
  
Johnny’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Until, hoarsely, “…yeah.”  
  
“Not, like, _tonight_ ,” TJ clarified. “But…sometime.”  
  
“Yes,” Johnny whispered. “Yes.”  
  
“Yes.” He looked at Johnny’s face, added, “I’m all right. Well. Not all _right_. But. I learned how to make pancakes.”  
  
“Pancakes…”  
  
“I can cook for you. If you want breakfast food.”  
  
“Every single breakfast,” Johnny said, “ever, with you.”  
  
Roses danced in the background, under daylight.  
  
TJ caught a glimpse of the microwave clock through breathless anticipation; winced. “We have an appointment.”  
  
“We do?”  
  
“I said we’d get you a suit. For the party. Come on.”  
  
Johnny nodded, looking at him as if seeing a priceless treasure, a newfound pearl, an angel on earth, and held his hand as if he’d go wherever TJ asked him to, forever.  
  
They got Johnny a suit. The shop did not appreciate the rush job, but did appreciate money and notoriety. The suit fit Johnny like a glove, blue fabric reflecting his eyes and hugging acres of stunt-rider muscle. TJ let his enjoyment of the sight show; he might as well, given his reputation, but Johnny grinned right back, and the moment felt honest, felt like delight.  
  
He had to go stand on a dais with his family at the press conference. He did not want to; he rode over in a car with Johnny Storm, and held Johnny’s hand, and wanted to kiss Johnny, but got suddenly shy: he had not kissed Johnny in public, not properly, not ever, and what if, like Sean, what if—  
  
Johnny licked lips and leaned in and TJ’s breath shivered on an inhale.  
  
His phone shrilled. Douglas. Telling him to hurry up.  
  
He sighed.   
  
“Go,” Johnny said, waving him toward family obligations; but caught his hand as he started to move, and pressed a kiss to the back of it, light and undemanding but sure.  
  
TJ, whole body tingling, went.  
  
He stood with his family. He smiled automatically for reporters and cameras. He applauded his mother as she accepted her party’s nomination for the presidential candidacy with grace and the appropriate amount of humility.  
  
She would win. They all knew. No other outcome permitted. Back in the White House, he thought; and then he thought, surprised: I don’t have to live there, I’m not a teenager anymore, I can keep my apartment and—  
  
And what? Live a life full of pineapple pancakes and Johnny Storm and airy brunches with his brother and Anne and piano-notes in the air? Could that be real?   
  
_Could_ it all be real?  
  
Anne stood with the family, wearing a simple navy-blue dress and flattering low heels. She’d been family for years, of course.  
  
He wondered whether he could’ve had Johnny Storm at his side if he’d asked. If Johnny would ever—  
  
That might be asking too much. Not of his family; of Johnny. Or of himself. He wasn’t sure.  
  
His hand missed the presence of Johnny’s in it.  
  
The press conference ended in a flurry of congratulatory well-wishes from journalists; the coverage’d be favorable. Johnny Storm, lurking in a doorway—he did not have press credentials, and the doorway must’ve been some sort of compromise between event staff and Johnny’s assertive shoulders—caught his eye, but TJ got whisked away by his family for celebratory sparkling cider and champagne backstage.  
  
“Well,” his mother was saying, triumphant, “we’re on the way.”  
  
“The beginning!” his father agreed heartily. “Or a second beginning, you know what I mean, we’ll really get the chance to shake up old Washington this time around—”  
  
Douglas was on Twitter, checking responses. “Looking good, Mom.”  
  
“Of course,” Anne said.  
  
TJ stayed quiet, sorting out complicated and contradictory emotions.  
  
Doug looked up from the phone, and their gazes met; Doug was asking.  
  
“If I’m going to accidentally get the Fantastic Four to endorse your candidacy,” TJ said, “next time I want to do it by letting Johnny Storm grab my ass on camera.”  
  
“Oh, TJ,” his mother said. “Sweetheart, really, do you have to?”  
  
“He’s joking,” Doug said, tone a cross between _you’d better be_ and vast amusement. “That wouldn’t even be news, the media already knows that you like boys and that Johnny Storm’s a playboy, but also, Mom, he’s right. People like the Fantastic Four—that’s a stupid nickname for scientists, they sound like superheroes—and all the charity work they do, and a _lot_ of people noticed Johnny in the room, just now.”  
  
“He wasn’t technically _in_ the room,” TJ said, mostly to be a brat and in part to thank his twin for giving his own cynical comment a more generous slant.   
  
Their parents looked interested, aware that they were unaware of some new drift in familial cross-currents; but Doug snorted, entertained. Anne smiled too.  
  
TJ thought: we all know Johnny Storm’s a playboy. We know that. Don’t we?  
  
Reformed playboy, maybe. Buying books and bringing home flowers. Only playing with one person these days. He couldn’t help smiling.  
  
“Okay,” his father said. “Party. Mingle. Have a good time. Make sure you talk to—”  
  
“We know,” Douglas and Anne said in chorus. Then everyone looked at TJ. He said, “I’ll behave.”  
  
“We love you,” his mother agreed, and patted his shoulder. “We know you’ll be fine.”  
  
Doug said, “Did you bring battle scones in case I need rescuing?”  
  
And TJ, to his great surprise, laughed.  
  
The celebration party exploded at the seams of the lavish hotel, dripping with alcohol and raucous release and political maneuvering greased by liquor and wealth. Washington letting its hair down, in the wake of the nomination, in the poised breath right before the race galloped ahead. Cheers erupted when the family came in. TJ’s eyes went to one person, and him alone.  
  
Johnny came over, ignoring bodies between them—the bodies moved hastily—and took his hands, both of them: a beaming exuberant grip, more than only one hand-hold could contain. They stood there holding on, smiling at each other. His family melted away toward various partisan machinations; the whole world melted away.  
  
Johnny said, “God, I wanted to be up there with you. You look so—”  
  
“Thin?”  
  
“Strong. The strongest person in that room.”  
  
“As if,” TJ said, but tension he’d not even known he was carrying had drained from his body. He stepped closer, under Johnny’s arm as it went over his shoulders. “I want to find an empty room and peel you out of that suit. Just so you know.”  
  
A passing congresswoman heard this, raised eyebrows at them, and said, “We _are_ in a hotel…” and TJ heard, as she headed for the bar, “…kids today, can’t even arrange their own little rendezvous without help…”  
  
“I like her,” Johnny said. “And I don’t even know her. And I like your idea.”  
  
“We _should_ probably stay for more than half a minute…”  
  
“I know.” Johnny was, TJ reminded himself, a public-appearance veteran. “Come on, I’ll get us drinks—you want soda, sparkling cider, what?”  
  
“Classic Coke,” TJ said cheerfully, and stuck to Johnny as they navigated the crowd. Lobbyists and volunteers and campaign personnel stopped him every so often for congratulations or angling for position or veiled surprise and backhanded comments regarding how good he looked lately. They’d likely all read that article; some of them even likely believed he wasn’t back in rehab after all.  
  
Music—classic all-American rock, because his father’d chosen a supposedly relatable soundtrack—thumped from walls. Voices babbled. Free-flowing cocktails flowed.  
  
Johnny handed him an ice-cold drink, clinked glasses together. “Cheers.”  
  
To the first night I saw you, TJ thought, but he didn’t say it. Too sentimental. Too much like pouring his heart out, the heart he wanted to lay at Johnny Storm’s feet. Somewhere between the roses and the book on opera-related financial proceedings, he’d given in. He was in love, and he knew he was.  
  
He wanted to say the words. They stuck in his throat. Snarled in the last time he’d said them, the last person he’d said them to. He did not know what Johnny wanted; he knew Johnny wanted him, was here with him, wasn’t ashamed of him.  
  
That would be enough. That would have to be enough. TJ Hammond could not expect anything more from a good man, and had no right to demand it.  
  
He gazed up—not far, only an inch or so—at Johnny’s happy grin. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, thoughtfully collecting the last taste of rich sugary soda, watching Johnny’s eyes darken.  
  
Johnny put a hand out. Touched not his hand but his wrist: tracing small purposeful circles over delicate skin. TJ’s heart pounded.  
  
“So,” Johnny said, low. “Room?”  
  
“Oh god yes please.”  
  
When he turned he saw a familiar head between them and the door.  
  
The floor fell out from under his feet. Sounds faded to a dull indistinct roar.  
  
“TJ?” Johnny’s eyes, bright blue with concern, swung between him and that head. Firm hands gripping his shoulders through the suit. “TJ, look at me. Right here. At me. Focus on my voice. What’s wrong? What did I—”  
  
“Not you.” He swallowed. This felt like swallowing knives. Shards of glass. Shreds of his heart. The bittersweet flavor of a body and a climax he’d once known better than he’d known his own. “I’m—he—I didn’t think he’d be—it’s not you, don’t think that, please.”  
  
“He—” Johnny’s mouth fell open. “ _Him_.”  
  
“Sean,” TJ whispered.  
  
Sean hadn’t seen him. Was laughing, gesturing, charming another young man, not anyone TJ recognized. The young man had long legs and dark hair that stood up in an attractively rumpled way. Sean’s wedding ring flashed gold; the young man did not seem to care.  
  
Johnny’s hands dug into his shoulders, almost painful. “That’s him? Over there?” Fury growled along every syllable. “Said once I’d punch him in the face for you, didn’t I?”  
  
“That’s him. You don’t have to.”  
  
“Someone needs to.” Johnny realized the strength of his grip, then; his hands jerked upward. “Christ. Am I hurting you?”  
  
“No,” TJ said weakly.  
  
“He can’t do that and get away with it.” Johnny glared across the room. Irate moral scruples on display. A hero. “Besides, you should get to punch him too.”  
  
“I don’t think I—”  
  
“Come on.”  
  
“We could just go—”  
  
“Come _on_.” Johnny grabbed his hand. Towed him across the distance: an unstoppable avenging angel, a firestorm.  
  
No, TJ tried to say, feet leaden. His stomach hurt. No. He could’ve spent his entire life not seeing Sean again; he could’ve not thought about Sean ever again. He could’ve thought about Johnny instead.  
  
Sean saw them coming. His eyebrows went up. The young man tactfully faded into the background, but stayed present, intrigued. Other persons looked over, tempted by the show.  
  
Sean was beautiful under party lights, surrounded by rock and roll. He wore a stylish-yet-traditional suit like a man born to the fashion; he held a drink in one hand, and he looked like what he was: the golden-boy rapidly-rising youthful politician.   
  
TJ was shaking. Johnny squeezed his hand, no doubt meant to be reassurance. “You.”  
  
“Me?” Sean said. “Sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.”  
  
“I don’t like you,” Johnny said, “but I think he gets the first swing,” and tugged TJ forward. “Go on, baby.”  
  
“Baby?” Sean laughed. “Pet names and puppy love, TJ? I thought you grew up. Fast.”  
  
“You never loved me,” TJ said.  
  
“I told you that,” Sean said. “It’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.”  
  
“He’ll leave you,” TJ said to the young man. “He’ll make you believe in—in everything, and then he’ll take it away. Don’t listen to him.”  
  
“We were only talking.” Sean took a sip of his drink, unthreatened. Johnny Storm was vibrating with suppressed rage. Sean went on, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, TJ. I do talk to men who aren’t you. You can’t be jealous.”  
  
“ _Jealous_ —” He couldn’t find words. He felt dizzy.  
  
“TJ,” Sean said, dreadfully kindly, “you can’t just follow me around.”  
  
“I didn’t—” I didn’t know you’d be here. I didn’t think about you. I didn’t think about you. Say it, say it.  
  
“I know it was hard for you,” Sean went on. Nothing but concern. “But that’s not my fault, is it? We’re done, you know that, you _knew_ that, and that stunt you pulled, putting yourself in the hospital, you can’t do shit like that to me, TJ, understand? That drew attention. That’s not okay.”  
  
Johnny’s eyes, at TJ’s side, snapped from blue-fire warmth to frozen ice. “You _fucking son of a_ —”  
  
“Oh,” Sean said, “are you his new infatuation? Really? I heard, but I couldn’t quite believe Johnny Storm’d want my leftovers.”  
  
Johnny’s muscles coiled. TJ put a frantic hand on his bicep. Johnny couldn’t punch Sean Reeves in the middle of his mother’s celebration—Johnny shouldn’t punch Sean Reeves—Sean’s eyes held pity, and he couldn’t think, trapped like a fly in amber.  
  
Sean sighed. Talking to Johnny still. As if TJ didn’t matter. Insects with shattered hearts didn’t. “You’ll learn. He’ll expect you to come over whenever he needs attention, and he needs attention all the time. It’s sweet, at first.”  
  
Johnny said, “Walk the fuck away now.” His hands were fists.  
  
“Don’t,” TJ whispered, not sure to whom, not sure anyone could hear. Other partygoing bodies had formed a circle around them. He couldn’t see his family.  
  
Johnny swung around to stare at him. “You gotta let me hit him!”  
  
“So violent,” Sean said. “TJ, I’m sorry, I really am. But it’s a broken heart. People get over those. People don’t put themselves in the hospital and then come crawling back for more, okay? _I’m_ not coming back.”  
  
“I am over you,” TJ said, and discovered that it was true, with his hand on Johnny’s arm. “And—and about coming. I wasn’t the one of us who—who had problems with coming.”  
  
Sean’s face went blank. Then it filled in red with utter disbelief.  
  
The words reverberated from the walls. In the hush, some eavesdropper tittered. A second person, encouraged, laughed.  
  
And that item would be in every tattle-tale D.C. gossip column within five minutes: Sean’s fate sealed by the laugh.  
  
“It’s not _true_ ,” Sean said.  
  
TJ, all at once exhausted, said to Johnny, “I’d like to leave now.” He thought he should feel triumphant; he did, but he also felt empty, off-balance, not himself. No solid ground.  
  
His twin materialized on his other side, support from thin air. “We didn’t invite you.”  
  
“Someone in your family approved the guest list,” Sean said, fighting back.  
  
“None of us would,” Douglas said. “I distinctly remember Mom taking you _off_ the first list.”  
  
“You need me. My influence.”  
  
“Not that much we don’t. You’re not welcome here.”  
  
TJ wanted to say thank you. He wanted to curl into a ball and sink through the ballroom floor. He wanted to be strong enough to fight this battle without relying on Johnny, on Douglas, on other people. Johnny had called him strong, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t get his lungs to work. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears.  
  
“You won’t be welcome anywhere,” Doug said, “very soon. Not exactly the kind of person we want setting the moral tone for our administration. Also, evidently, you couldn’t get anything done anyway. Not very…potent.”  
  
“You,” Sean said to TJ, “are poisonous. Everyone knows that. You ruin everyone you touch. Including me, now. You know you’re no good for anyone.”  
  
“TJ,” Doug said, turning to him, ignoring Sean, “you know we wouldn’t, right? You know we didn’t invite him? It must’ve been—oh, fuck, Mom’s awful event planner, with delusions of grandeur, the one who complained so much about you bringing a last-minute date. Of course it was.”  
  
“I know,” TJ got out. He did. “I know. I think—I just want to leave. Please.”  
  
“I’ve got you.” Johnny’s arms went around him; above his head, Johnny and Doug exchanged concern and recognition. “I’ve got him. We’ll get out of here.”  
  
“I,” his twin said, “will take out the trash,” with an expression that did not bode well for Sean’s future wellbeing. “And I’ll handle the press. And Mom.”  
  
“Mom,” TJ said. “Oh god.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” said a man next to him. A certain photographer. One he thought he recognized. “We’ve got your back. We’ll tell the right story.”  
  
TJ tried to nod in acceptance of this gift, but was shaking again; he realized this because every movement felt wrong. Johnny kept him close and sheltered and got him through the room and out into a car, a cab, he thought. He wanted a drink; he did not want a drink; he wanted to not have to _think_.  
  
He shut his eyes and hid in Johnny’s arms, cradled against Johnny’s chest. This was not a solution, but it would get him through for now. For the next minute. That was all he could imagine.


	8. either at sixes or at sevens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things are real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings for:** minor self-harm, specifically TJ digging nails into skin in an effort to feel. Not at all suicidal or trying to not-exist, but seeking the hurt as confirmation of reality.
> 
> And then there is a LOT of comfort and Johnny being there for him. And porn-with-love.

By the time they got to his apartment he couldn’t talk. And he couldn’t stop shaking. And he couldn’t breathe. The world spun and lurched in sickening displays of color: riotous red lights, black night, yellow taxi doors, worried blue in Johnny’s eyes. He barely recalled his own address; he felt his lungs trying to get air, scrape scrape scratch, desperate clawing.  
  
Sean had said—Sean thought—  
  
Had Sean always thought so of him?  
  
Did Johnny?  
  
Beautiful fiery torch-like Johnny, holding up his family with big impulsive hands and a lamp lifted to beckon in hearts—  
  
Those hands touched him. Steadied him in the cab. Grabbed him as he stumbled, exiting. Johnny was talking but the words became a drone, a buzz, deadening.  
  
He’d said—what he’d said—to Sean, whom he did not love, not anymore; that discovery of lack, of hardness in place of soft yielding, thudded into his stomach like a stone: he was someone different now. Those words terrified.  
  
Johnny took his keys and got him into the elevator and kept an arm around him. TJ lost time, and shivered awake sitting huddled on his brand-new sofa. He didn’t feel real.   
  
Johnny said his name. Johnny, who was there. Johnny, who was kind. Who would be kind, the way a superhero would be kind to a wounded animal: who could love TJ Hammond, maybe, but of course only in the way that superhero would love that animal. Someone made a sound; he did not know that it was him, at first.  
  
“TJ.” Johnny was begging now, over and over, repeating his name like an invocation or a prayer. “TJ, what can I do, what do you need, what can I—tell me, talk to me, baby, please—” And large hands rubbed up and down his arms as if trying to warm them. “TJ?”  
  
He did not feel anything, as if Johnny were too far away to touch; that was true, though. Johnny could not mean the touches, had only been misfortunate enough to be here.  
  
He needed a high, he needed an out, he needed the bittersweet rush of oblivion; he could not go down that road. Not again.  
  
He put his right hand on his left wrist. He pushed up his shirt-sleeve. He dug fingernails into his arm. Crescents over a vein.  
  
“TJ,” Johnny pleaded, trying to stop him, trying to move the arm. “Oh god—don’t, please stop, please.”  
  
Harder. Bruises, sick little semi-circles like mocking mouths. His nails weren’t sharp enough to draw blood. Fine. He only needed the bright blossom of hurt: his body, if it hurt. Familiar. Again: real. All of it.  
  
“TJ, please.” Johnny’s voice sounded wrong. Wet. “I don’t know what to—should I call someone, or—please look at me, please, god, you’re okay, you’re safe, I swear, and you were fucking incredible tonight, what you said to him—”  
  
“It’s not real,” TJ whispered. He meant that whatever Johnny pretended to see in him was untrue; he meant that his lips felt numb; he meant that he wanted Johnny to stay with him, more than he could remember wanting anything in a very long time. And he knew that he was afraid, and he did not want the fear to be the only truth.  
  
“Real—” Johnny searched his face. Hands rested over his wrists, not hard. “I’ve got an idea. Don’t move. Promise me you won’t, just for a minute, you’ll be good, okay?”  
  
Tears bubbled like ugly witches’ broth beneath the surface; but despite everything some secret sad part of him wanted to be good for Johnny, so he nodded.  
  
Johnny whispered, “Thank you,” sheer amount of relief shocking, as if the answer’d been in question, and released a breath. The solid grip on his wrists vanished; he could’ve tried again, more bruises.   
  
He’d promised. He didn’t move at all.  
  
A rattle bounced back from his kitchen. Ice? The refrigerator? But, TJ thought, I don’t even have Coke for you; and he knew that this was absurd and probably hysterical. He closed his eyes as the room revolved.  
  
Fingers brushed his arm. They rolled up his sleeve. A starburst of cold sparkled up from his abused wrist and ran down his spine.   
  
He opened his eyes. Looked. Johnny was holding an ice-cube to the inside of his wrist. It gleamed simple and clear and tangible. It left the shine of melting water on his reddened skin.  
  
He started to cry, then.   
  
Johnny held him through it, held him as the old wound cracked open and bled, held him as TJ crumpled into a heap and got tears and snot all over both their suits. Held him as the ice-cube puddled under the pressure of both their hands.  
  
Johnny fished a second cube out of the cup, and TJ wept in his arms, letting go and being kept from falling. “I’m sorry,” he tried once, though it would’ve been a miracle if the words’d made any sense, smothered by water and Johnny’s chest. “I’m sorry, I—”  
  
“Nah.” Johnny ran the other hand over his back, unbothered. “Nothin’ to be sorry about. Your ex is a massive dick, and you got to tell him to fuck off, and I get why you’re feeling—okay, I’m not you, obviously, that’s stupid, but I kinda get it. Like making a jump, like lookin’ down mid-air, and not knowing how you’re gonna make the landing, even after you do. Makes sense.” His voice settled around TJ’s shoulders like a blanket. TJ, a disaster of ice-water tear-track dampness, sniffled, hiccupped, declined a third ice-cube without thinking much about it. He was exhausted.   
  
He let his heavy head rest on Johnny’s chest and listened to the vibration of words. “He _is_ a dick, your ex. And I’ve been one, so I should know. You deserve better.” Some other emotion stirred beneath that tone like a surfacing sea-creature, drawn by passion, corralled back down. “I know you—you care about him. That’s not—if you still love him that’s okay. I mean, he doesn’t deserve that, you loving him, but if you feel it—you can’t not love someone, sometimes. What you feel.”  
  
I think I don’t, TJ wanted to say. But he was so very tired, sore like he’d run a marathon, propped up by Johnny’s care; words refused to form.   
  
“It’s okay,” Johnny said again, “it’s a hell of a lot, I get that, it’s okay,” and stroked his hair.  
  
I think you’re right, TJ thought fuzzily. You can’t not love someone sometimes. With ice-cubes. And you told me it’s all right if I still love Sean.  
  
“I’m okay,” he decided, in defiance of now-easy tears.  
  
“Shh,” Johnny said, “I know you are, so fucking brave, so good, did I say that, you are,” and TJ sniffled, no doubt unattractively so, being held.  
  
“Come on,” Johnny said, “can I take care of you?” and scooped him up, actually carrying him bridal-style; Johnny Storm was impressively strong. “Bed?”  
  
TJ nestled into pillows, let Johnny strip off his battered suit, closed his eyes while gentle hands found a damp washcloth and cleaned his face. He reached out, an impulse, as Johnny moved to re-wet the cloth; he caught the waistband of Johnny’s suit-pants and tugged a little.  
  
“Okay,” Johnny agreed, “of course, yeah, not going anywhere, right here,” and got right into bed with him, shoes off but mostly dressed. TJ wanted to thank him, but instead fell asleep: holding on and surrounded by the feel and scent and weight of him. He felt worn thin and hollow, emptied out like a shell left on beach-sand. But Johnny’s heartbeat echoed like the sea.  
  
He woke with Johnny’s arm around him; Johnny, plainly already awake, had been texting someone one-handed, but instantly stopped. TJ, brittle and spiky and yet strangely anchored, said, “What time’s it?”  
  
Late, he guessed. The blinds were losing around the edges to a flood of sun. His throat burned raw. Like he’d been crying.   
  
“Almost noon.” Johnny kept the arm around him, not in any hurry to move. “How’re you feeling?”  
  
“Like I’ve just sobered up after a five-day party.” He added hastily, “Both the bad and the good. Kind of awful. Headache. But. Clearer. You stayed.”  
  
The crescent marks on his wrist had stayed too, shading from rosebud-pink to berry-red; but he didn’t feel like trying again, when he looked at them. They just were.  
  
“I’m not going to leave you.” Johnny kissed the tip of his nose: swift and playful and serious simultaneously. “I’m here.”  
  
I’m here, TJ thought. I’m here and you’re here. We’re here. “Who was that? On the phone?”  
  
“The—oh, Sue. She saw some shit on social media, reports about—and I didn’t come home today. She worries. Headache?”  
  
“Better.” It was. Johnny’s fingers had found his temple and were rubbing slowly, unerringly easing the exact spot. On impulse he said, “I could get used to this. Waking up with you in my bed.”  
  
“Tell me more.” Johnny grinned, not pausing the massage. “Have we met before? Am I the man of your dreams?”  
  
“Still terrible,” TJ said, laughing: not at the line but at the wondrous fragile butterfly feeling in his chest. The sunbeams ventured out around blinds, bashful and brave.  
  
He reached up, and drew Johnny’s head down, and kissed him.  
  
They made out like teenagers discovering bodies for the first time, for every first time; they kissed under lazy dim sunshine amid scattered pillows. Hands wandered, lips wandered, mapping out favorite trails and fascinating new lands, in no hurry. Johnny paused once or twice, the question in his eyes; TJ let his own expression answer that, and left another kiss at the corner of Johnny’s mouth.  
  
Johnny’d slept in clothes, shirtsleeves and suit-pants; TJ’d ended up undressed, though he didn’t quite recall how. Johnny’s hands, he thought. Stripping away his ruined shell the night before. He rolled them over; Johnny landed on top, weight draped over him, pinning him. TJ sighed, let his body go lax, let himself be still and small and safe and held down.  
  
Johnny kissed his lips, kissed his eyebrow, nuzzled his throat. TJ sighed, cock hard, whole body lit up in a distant dreamy way.  
  
“This helps?” Johnny bumped a nose into his, asking. “Am I—helping?”  
  
Yes, TJ’s mouth said, no sound; he touched his throat, surprised. Talking. Effort. He nodded.  
  
“I want you,” Johnny said. “I won’t—I won’t ask for anything you’re not ready for. But I want you.” His arousal pressed into TJ’s thigh, insistent and large. “If this helps—anything. For you. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”  
  
TJ shook his head, cheeks hot.  
  
“Yeah, you are.” Johnny’s fingers lifted his chin. “And great with the lines, I mean, that bit about not coming, wow. You had that moment. And his face—” Blue eyes watched TJ’s, too astutely. “But I’m not talking about him. It’s about you. Because you were so brave, and so good, and we came back here and you let me help, and that’s about the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”  
  
TJ retorted, “You can’t’ve seen much,” but the protest lacked force. Undermined by gently asserted words and their respective positions.  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said. “You said you wanted to be mine. You gave me a—a second chance. So now you get to listen when I tell you things. I’m telling you to listen. You are good. You did so well, you did everything I could’ve wanted, I’m so proud to be with you, I’m so pleased with you, so good, and here with me…”  
  
He closed his eyes. Let the rumble of words wash over and through him. He wanted to be good for Johnny; he wanted to believe them. Believing them felt good. He could let that happen, feeling good.  
  
“You want this?” Johnny rocked hips against his; weight rubbed along his cock, and he gasped, but the sensation went everyplace too, as if his body’d become one singing note. “You want to come for me like this, baby?”  
  
He wanted more; he wanted to feel more. He wanted to wait. He wanted to let Johnny tell him. He shook his head, but arched up into the delicious strength of Johnny Storm covering him and pinning him down.  
  
“Not yet, huh?” Johnny kissed him, tongue sliding in slow as honey, drawing the kiss out into infinite languor. “What do you want? Or should I decide?”  
  
“You,” TJ said. Hard to think around the heady glow, the drowsy euphoria drugging limbs like sweetest intoxication. “Johnny…”  
  
“You want to be mine.” That voice held nothing but reverence. “The way you look at me, god…how’d I deserve you taking me back?”  
  
“I’m already yours,” TJ said, bewildered, “I always was, I want you,” and Johnny laughed, somewhat damply, and pressed kisses into his collarbone, hot and possessive and wonderful. “So—right now—?”  
  
“Now,” TJ begged, “right now, right here, please, I want you—” and Johnny let out a noise someplace between a growl of lust and a prayer of gratitude, and grabbed both of TJ’s wrists and yanked them above his head on a pillow and then whispered “Mine” and let go. “Keep your hands here.”  
  
Johnny knew he didn’t like restraints. Nothing held his hands in place other than that soft command. TJ trembled, overcome with desire, getting lost in the swell.  
  
Johnny kissed him once more, swiftly, and then slid a hand downward: taking his cock, fondling him, stroking him. “Watch.” TJ, watching Johnny handle his shaft and balls so easily, completely subject to Johnny’s whims and caresses, felt the sob of relief and rightness in his chest, in his throat, in suddenly wet eyes.  
  
Johnny stopped. “TJ?”  
  
TJ shook his head, said, “I’m—I’m—it’s—please, fuck, please, I need this,” and his voice went away and his throat closed up with desperate honest emotion.  
  
“I missed you,” Johnny breathed. “And last night—I don’t want to hurt you…”  
  
“Please,” TJ begged, lying on his bed with his cock cupped in Johnny’s large hands, aching to be petted. “You won’t, you’ll make me feel good, I need _you_ , and _this_ hurts, when you aren’t _doing_ anything, so come on, I missed you, please.”  
  
And Johnny laughed, swiped the other hand across eyes, smirked at him. “Okay, baby. You want me to do somethin’? I want you to watch what I’m doing to you, and you come when I say you can, not before or after, clear?”  
  
TJ nodded. Johnny’s hand squeezed his cock: hard enough to hurt, but in a good way, a concentrated pulse of dominance between his legs. TJ stared, and forgot to breathe: Johnny’s hand moved up and down his shaft, stroking him, pumping him; the head slipped slickly in and out of fingers, dripping wet and flushed with want. His balls drew up even tighter; he shuddered, head to toe, mesmerized by himself and Johnny’s hand, Johnny’s command drawing more and more wet dribbles from that slit, leaking over himself and every smooth stroke. He kept his hands still, obediently; he would do anything for Johnny, anything at all.  
  
Johnny’s hand worked him a little rougher, a little faster. TJ whimpered, arching hips up. He needed more; he wanted to come like this, all over himself and Johnny’s hand, but only if Johnny told him to, because he was Johnny’s good boy.  
  
“So good,” Johnny whispered, reading his mind. “So close, aren’t you? All mine, needing this, needing me…”  
  
TJ sobbed softly, rocking hips into Johnny’s hand; Johnny’s other arm steadied him.  
  
“Okay, then,” Johnny said, quiet, reverent, eyes intent. “Come for me.” And rubbed a thumb over that spot on the underside of his cock, the sensitive quivering spot; and TJ came helplessly, mouth open in a silent cry, cock spurting between them, in a climax that seemed to go on and on and turn him into millions of tiny stars.  
  
Before he could even begin to come down, he felt Johnny’s hands on his body; he felt Johnny kneeling above him. He opened his mouth; he heard the rustle of clothing removed, and Johnny’s erection sprang free, huge and hot and ready. Clumsy, unable to move much, he licked at the tip; big hands steadied his head, and Johnny pushed into his mouth, controlled but impatient thrusts that went deep and filled him up so well. Johnny was panting his name, and just panting, body tense and orgasm imminent; Johnny groaned and shoved himself down TJ’s willing throat and came, a flood of release, and then pulled back enough that the last jets spilled across TJ’s dazed mouth, one blissful cheekbone, the corner of parted lips.  
  
TJ heard someone moan; he thought he might be coming again; the throb started between his legs, someplace deep inside, and became omnipresent. His body shook: endless tremors of uncontrolled ecstasy. He belonged here. He felt safe and cared for and desired. And this was right.  
  
“Oh,” Johnny said, breathless. “Oh, TJ—”  
  
And he was crying, at the sound of his name on Johnny’s lips. He hadn’t meant to be crying; he wasn’t sad or scared or hurt. Overcome by sensation, by relief, by an absence of loneliness: both of them here and present and together, and the togetherness pierced him through with sweet release.  
  
“TJ—” Johnny said again.  
  
“Green,” TJ got out, because he had to reassure his Johnny, and then wrapped arms around those muscular legs and leaned his face into the closest knee, nuzzling, not thinking.  
  
“Okay.” Johnny reached down, rested a hand in his hair. “Okay. Come here, beautiful.”  
  
TJ lost some time after that, floating. He had no memory of moving, but he found himself tucked into bed with protective Storm-shields wrapped around him, and they were both naked, and Johnny had evidently been feeding him orange segments. His mouth tasted like juice.  
  
“Hi,” he said, fuzzy but waking up. Johnny’s grin brightened every corner of the room.   
  
“Hi, yourself. That was…you looked…”  
  
“Do we have to talk about it?” He meant that he did not want to: he wanted to let the memory lie glorious and undissected and flawless forever.  
  
“No,” Johnny said after a minute. “No. You said we were green, and I trust you—god, I needed you. When I thought I’d lost you, when we weren’t—I always need you. Can I ask you one more question?”  
  
You trust me, TJ thought. “Anything. If I can have the last orange.”  
  
“Still bossy,” Johnny noted, and fed it to him. “Are you…was that…what you needed? Was it…okay?”  
  
“I think so,” TJ whispered back. The moment felt like a whisper. “Yes. You—yes.”  
  
“I’m glad.” Johnny kissed him lightly, lovingly. “I’m glad. How’re you feeling?”  
  
“Tired?”  
  
“That’s fine. That’s okay, baby, you can sleep.” Johnny eased him down into bed again. “Rest a while. For me. I’ll be right here.”  
  
“I know you will,” TJ mumbled sleepily. He reached out, clung to Johnny. He saw Johnny’s face: astonishment and heartpiercing happiness at the words. I love you, he thought, but he couldn’t stay up and have the conversation now; he felt too sated and drowsy and good, and he fell into slumber warm and secure.


	9. oh rapture unforeseen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they say I love you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember when I thought this was going to be FIVE chapters?
> 
> The epilogue will hopefully be up tomorrow. And then we'll be done!

He woke alone in bed. Disoriented but warm, he blinked at his ceiling for a minute; the ceiling gazed back without illumination. The space beside him held the imprint of Johnny’s heat; clearly he’d not been left alone for long.  
  
Johnny Storm, he thought. I love you. The thought was blindingly bright, like coruscation, like a future. He’d said that he knew Johnny’d stay with him. He did know: Johnny would. And that was a comprehension he couldn’t quite grasp but wanted to: it trembled at the tip of his reach.  
  
He could hear voices. They’d woken him, he realized. Coming from his living room.  
  
Voices?  
  
He lay without moving—he felt safe and cocooned and he trusted that Johnny would come back—and eavesdropped. If the voices were discussing fallout from last night’s implosion, he wanted to go in well-armed.  
  
Johnny was talking, but stopped before TJ could quite make out words. Someone else said something. A woman; a voice TJ’d not heard in person, but one he recognized from television interviews and live-streams of Baxter Foundation events. Johnny Storm’s sister.  
  
Johnny’s sister? In his living room? His address wasn’t exactly a secret; he did not advertise, but he hadn’t moved out after Sean, and anyone with an interest and a few connections could certainly find him. That wasn’t the question.  
  
“He’s asleep,” Johnny hissed. “Don’t you dare wake him up—”  
  
“That’s exactly why we’re here,” Sue Storm said. “TJ Hammond, Johnny. Did you have to?”  
  
“TJ Narcotics Anonymous Hammond,” rumbled a voice that had to be Ben Grimm, fellow Fantastic Four scientist and test pilot and by most accounts a gruff but decent guy. His judgment could be trusted. “Johnny, seriously?”  
  
Johnny’s voice scorched the air. Sizzled with sudden rage. “Yeah. TJ Hammond. Don’t say another fucking _word_.”  
  
“Johnny—”  
  
“That man,” and oh TJ could imagine Johnny’s eyes, narrowed and blazing, showing every ounce of emotion the way they forever would, “that man asleep in there is braver than all of us put together, he’s putting _himself_ back together, he gets up and keeps trying every single _day_ , and you—”  
  
“Johnny,” interrupted the calm science-cool voice of Reed Richards, “we know. It’s not about that.”  
  
TJ sat up.  
  
“We know he’s a good boy,” Sue Storm said. “We know he’s trying. But, Johnny—that’s exactly why we’re worried. You—well, you—we’re not sure this is best. For either of you.”  
  
“For—”  
  
Ben Grimm sighed, “You’re a playboy, kid, you always have been, you love ’em and leave ’em, you like fast and loud and more.”  
  
“And someone like TJ Hammond,” Sue explained with dreadful good intentions, “will get hurt. Of course you won’t mean to. But you’ve said it yourself. You’re reckless, Johnny. Careless. You like fun.”  
  
TJ swung both feet out of bed. Hunted for his pants.  
  
“Based on empirical evidence,” Reed hammered dully home, “you’ll get bored, you’ll get tired of whatever this reformed personality phase is, and when you leave him you'll break him all over again. The boy’s an addict and has no properly developed coping mechanisms and, according to my research—”  
  
“Your _research_ —” Johnny sounded furious. Forgetting to keep his voice down.  
  
“—he falls in love too fast and too hard. He’s more than likely in love with you already. And you’re not interested in commitment, Johnny, in the kind of responsibility that comes with—”  
  
“What the _fuck_ , Reed—”  
  
“—with loving someone like that, and—”  
  
“Get the hell _out_ —”  
  
“Johnny,” Sue Storm pleaded, “we’re only trying to help.”  
  
TJ walked out of the bedroom and into the firefight, barefoot and wearing his suit pants and dress shirt. Said, “Hi.”  
  
The three visiting members of the Fantastic Four had the grace to look abashed. Ben Grimm shuffled his big feet.  
  
“You’ve _woken him up_ —” Johnny spun toward him. Held out both arms. “Are you okay? Come here—”  
  
“I’m okay.” He stepped into the circle of Johnny’s kindness, tipped his head up. Their lips met: desperate, wonderful, crashing together. And TJ pulled away.  
  
If he didn’t, if he stayed, Johnny’d taste the tears.  
  
He said, to the Storm-Richards intervention squad, “You’re wrong.”  
  
Johnny said, “Of course they’re fucking wrong.”  
  
TJ ignored him. Spoke to Sue: Johnny’s sister. “You’re wrong about him. He’s not. Reckless. Careless. He’s—he held me last night. Just that. He didn’t touch me, he wouldn’t touch me, if I didn’t want—he only held me.” He pushed up his left sleeve. Red revealed half-moons stood out: the few he’d managed before Johnny’s hands’d brought him ice. He couldn’t look at Johnny’s face. “He’s the sort of person who holds people. When they need that. He’s the sort of person who notices when other people need to smile. And he asks them to dance.”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny breathed.  
  
“If anyone seduced anyone it’s me. I mean me doing it. Seducing him. Needing him. He—” He had to stop. To swallow. “You should know that. You need to know that.” Sue Storm was gazing at him with a kind of wonder, and surprise, and an odd hint of remorse.   
  
He said, “You’re wrong about him but you’re right about me. I’m not—he deserves better. Than me.”  
  
“No,” Johnny whispered this time, choking on the syllable as if it’d been involuntary. TJ didn’t look. He’d never finish if he looked.  
  
He said, “I’m an addict and a fuck-up and I’m never not going to need him. And he’s a good person. He’s a hero. He shouldn’t have had to deal with your Foundation finances, you should probably get like two more employees for that, including someone who can set up a funding dispensary system with accountability and expenditure tracking. He wasn’t actually good at it. But at least he tried. He’s trying. He’s—he’s the best person I know. And you should see that.”  
  
Sue Storm glanced at her younger brother. Opened her mouth; closed it.  
  
“So,” TJ said. One step toward his door. One more. Gradual easing of weight onto the next numb foot. “That’s it, really. You’re wrong about him, and you’re right about me, and—and he’s actually a really good dancer, and I’m sorry, I’m not sorry I said any of that, I’m sorry,” and then he was in front of his door, so he ran.  
  
He literally ran for a minute or two, enough to make it to the elevator before shocked pursuit could happen. He recalled, standing breathless as the doors closed, that he was barefoot, that he’d left his phone along with his heart.  
  
The Secret Service glanced at each other, but their job did not involve his love life, merely his safety; they watched him in the elevator and radioed to outside agents, but did not intervene.  
  
The lights were dim, in the elevator. One bulb out. Ludicrous, TJ thought. It was an expensive building.  
  
His feet were cold.  
  
He knew he’d been right. He loved Johnny; Johnny needed to be safe, the way that he’d made TJ feel safe. Johnny did not deserve to exist as merely TJ’s rock in terrible storms.   
  
Poisonous, Sean’d said. He’ll need you so much. It’s cute, at first.  
  
He didn’t know where he was going. He had to decide; Johnny would follow. Because Johnny did that. Tied to him.  
  
He made a decision. He ducked out the building’s side door and flagged down a cab. He buried his face in his hands.  
  
One of the Secret Service men, a stalwart blond-haired young agent nearly his own age, said, “Sir?”   
  
TJ looked up.  
  
“What size are your shoes?” said the Secret Service man.  
  
“Um,” TJ said blankly, and told him, after fishing around in shellshocked memory for the number.  
  
“Okay, here,” said the man, and kicked off his own and nudged them over. TJ stared at footwear.  
  
“Give them back whenever you want?” the agent offered.   
  
TJ very hesitantly put someone else’s shoes on, incongruous with his rumpled suit-pieces. His feet did feel warmer.  
  
The cab carried them away in silence, and TJ closed his eyes and thought: I know you’ll try to call. I know you’ll try to find me. I want you to find me, the way you once did in California; I want you to run away from me and stay safe from the poison. I don’t know. I hurt inside; can that be right? Can this be the right unselfish thing to do?  
  
The cab-driver did not normally go so far out of his route, but he was willing to make an exception for cash; TJ couldn’t find his wallet, realized he’d left that too, and bit his lip, trying to apologize. The driver said, “I know who you are, you’re—”  
  
“I am. Yes.”  
  
“I saw you outside a club once. Not my fare, but you got in a limo, it parked so I couldn’t get out.”  
  
“Sorry,” TJ said, for lack of other words.  
  
“I remember thinking, I’m glad he’s not in my car, a boy that drunk or high or whatever, who knows what you’d do to the backseat.”  
  
“Happy I could make you glad about that,” TJ said.  
  
“Are you all right?” his taxi-driver said.   
  
“What?”  
  
“We can go wherever you want, if I can help. No charge.”  
  
“…oh.” Belatedly, meaning it, he added, “Thank you.”  
  
His driver made a grunt that sounded like acknowledgement, and turned the wheel.  
  
TJ napped on and off during the drive. The Secret Service murmured quietly into earpieces and communication devices; they knew where they were going, and they were probably telling other members of other details, but TJ was too tired to think about the implications of that. He turned his face to the window. Let afternoon sun stream onto his face through glass.  
  
They passed out of the city and along winding roads; green intensified, and buildings dwindled. Fewer other cars passed, going either direction.  
  
They reached the family cabin in impressive time. He hopped out of the cab, thanked his driver clumsily but sincerely, dredged up a smile that he hoped accurately captured tired-but-truthful gratitude. The man told him to call if he needed a ride back, and took off toward the city and more lucrative passengers.  
  
The building loomed, but in an unassuming laid-back way. It belonged to the family, it served as a retreat and a fortress for the family, and it knew as much; it also knew that it wasn’t in D.C.  
  
He wandered into the cabin—cabin might be a misnomer; the word suggested small cozy spaces, and this place could host a wedding—and breathed in air: fresh and woodsy from trees, not stale because the caretakers and staff kept this place maintained. Nobody was here at the moment; his footfalls echoed. Solitude spread out around him.  
  
He eyed the knotholes in wood-grain walls, downstairs; he considered the kitchen, white-painted and spacious and down-home enough for his father to fry fish in. Bud Hammond was an expert fisherman; TJ and Douglas had both learned, though these days it was rare to catch Doug’s political polish giving way to hip-high wading boots and scales and water-splashes.  
  
TJ hadn’t minded fishing, assuming they ate the catch and had a use for it. He’d liked the peacefulness more: standing still amid flowing water, as far from the ripples and eddies of D.C. as one could get, even if that distance was an illusion.  
  
As, he thought, it always was.  
  
He found the room he generally used during family visits. He found an old pair of jeans and a grey t-shirt and a striped hoodie; he threw them on, along with socks and beat-up sneakers, and went to give his Secret Service detail back a pair of briefly worn shoes.  
  
He ducked into the bathroom, after. Pale leafy greens and browns ruled the color palette; he heard nothing like the noise of the city or the clamor of a celebration gala or a rally for a cause. Quiet, and a susurration of birdsong.  
  
He opened his hand. Three pills, the end of the stash he’d secreted in his closet; he knew what they would do. He knew about the cocaine baggie in the false back of the linen cupboard, and the infinite amount of alcohol in the liquor cabinet, kept well stocked.  
  
He took a breath, and curled his hand around the pills; they warmed to his skin. He remembered—  
  
He looked at the reflection in the mirror. Himself. He thought: I do look thin, no matter what stupid shit Johnny says about being strong.  
  
He thought: but maybe I look less thin, I _should_ , after coffee-cake and those parmesan popovers and so many pancakes. Okay, I know that doesn’t make a difference that fast, but still.  
  
He wanted to try the pineapple recipe again. He wanted to experiment with the taste of macadamia nuts and chocolate.  
  
He _wanted_.  
  
He opened his hand. Flushed the toilet. Came back out, expression carefully blank. His Secret Service agent matched the blankness, blandly.  
  
He went and unearthed the cocaine and flushed that too. He didn’t care whether anyone saw; his drugs were hardly news, though maybe the hiding-places had been.  
  
He left the alcohol because his family would want that. He wondered how long he had before someone guessed where he’d gone; it wouldn’t be difficult.   
  
He got a bottle of ice-cold local-spring water out of the refrigerator and went for a walk.  
  
In the end of course it was Johnny Storm who found him.  
  
TJ had been sitting on a large rock in the stream for long enough to lose track of time, by then; the rock was a little way out but perfectly wadeable if one didn’t care about minor wetness. He’d felt the heat of the afternoon sun, dappled by leaves and steady as gold, and hadn’t minded letting it dry him out. This was possibly only in part a metaphor; he knew how close he’d come.  
  
He sat on his rock—bigger than him, and grey, and solid as the soul of the earth—and listened to the twinkle and rush of water; not much wind existed, so emerald leaves merely chattered in low voices. He wrapped arms around pulled-up knees and watched sun sparkle off the current, flirting and winking, a constant companion at play.  
  
He saw Johnny before Johnny saw him; Johnny was obviously searching but had started out gazing the wrong way. Johnny’d been dressed, that morning, in his jeans and t-shirt, the clothes he’d arrived in flung on for familial confrontation; he hadn’t changed, and his hair stood up as much as it could, being short and ruffled. The sunshine haloed him in gold, making his silhouette shine dark and true.  
  
Johnny turned, and saw him, and said his name, though the word came out less of a shout across distance and more of a gasp.  
  
TJ detached one hand from the loop of arms around knees. Waved.  
  
Johnny came running. “TJ—”  
  
“I’m sorry,” TJ said. “I should’ve—I don’t know, sent a message, called you. From here, at least.” It was true; he hadn’t known how true until he saw Johnny’s eyes, just then. “I knew I left my phone. I didn’t mean—” He stopped, because he had meant to. He just hadn’t known about the way he could make those eyes change.  
  
He said again, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Are you—” Johnny faltered, gazing at him. “All right?”  
  
“I think so. How’d you find me?” And then, figuring it out, “Douglas.”  
  
“I called him. I didn’t know what else to do. He said to try here. And he’ll come too, um, the second I call back and say we want him to. If we do. But it made sense that you’d come up here, once he explained that you guys even had a, like, family retreat sort of spot. You’re not hiding.”  
  
Johnny knew him better than anyone ever had.  
  
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”  
  
“I’m kind of not bad at figuring out last-minute leaps. Trajectories. What you said to Sue and Reed—no one’s ever, for me—”  
  
“Their loss.”  
  
“Hey,” Johnny Storm said, matching his tone with evident effort, “I told you once I am pretty awesome. TJ—”  
  
“Come out here.”  
  
Johnny unhesitatingly splashed over. Sunlight tangled in his hair; river-water soaked his clothes. He stood in the stream beside the rock and waited.  
  
“Come on up,” TJ said.  
  
Johnny climbed up to sit beside him, deliberate, hopeful and afraid to be. Johnny Storm, TJ thought, afraid.  
  
He said, following this train of thought, “You’re not scared of anything.”  
  
“Yeah I am,” Johnny said, “I’m scared that I’m gonna take a last jump someday and I’m scared that no one sees me and I’m scared that you’re out here alone on a rock in the middle of freezing water, TJ, please.”   
  
“I like my rock,” TJ said.  
  
“I was wrong,” Johnny said. “At the party. You said you didn’t want to talk to him—you asked me not to, can’t we just go, you said—and I pushed you. I didn’t have the right to decide that. I’m an idiot. I don’t know why you ever let me try to take care of you.”  
  
TJ considered this, sitting on sundried stone with Johnny awkwardly and damply shifting position beside him. “You were. Wrong. But…you were right, too.”  
  
“Um…you might have to spell that one out for me.”  
  
He stretched legs out, let them dangle: toes almost but not quite brushing the gleaming water below. “It wasn’t a good time or place. I wasn’t ready, and you—but it needed to happen. You weren’t wrong about that. I had to see him again sometime. Resolution or whatever. So, okay.”  
  
“…okay?”  
  
“So we’re okay.” He added, half-irrelevantly, “I should’ve brought boots.”  
  
“Oh…for the water…can I say something, though?”  
  
“Yeah.” He pulled one leg back up, folded it under himself. It was a big rock. “I know what you’re going to say. You asked me once not to run when I got scared.”  
  
Johnny stared at him, mouth open. “I…yeah. I mean, yeah, not—not in those words, but—how’d you—?”  
  
“You said it. On the phone. The first time we talked about what we were doing. I used to run all the time. From myself. From everything.” He closed eyes, opened them. Sun fell warm over his skin. “You asked me not to and I did. I told myself it was for you. Keeping you from getting hurt. But I did hurt you. Because I got scared.”  
  
“You were thinking about me.” Johnny’s expression held too many truths. Heartbreak and want painted in stream and sunlight and flickering tree-branch shade. “You were—you know I don’t blame you.”  
  
“I sort of do. Blame me.” He shrugged, not a real movement, just eyebrows. “I’ll work on that if you’ll work on listening, deal? We can…keep working. On things. Maybe. If you want.”  
  
“TJ,” Johnny said.  
  
“I threw them away,” TJ said this time. “The last of the—I mean, you know I had drugs here, of course you knew I did. Pills. Cocaine. It doesn’t matter. I flushed them.”  
  
“I won’t tell you,” Johnny whispered, “that you should or shouldn’t.” A hand rested next to his, on stone, in sun. “But I’m glad.”  
  
“That wasn’t why I came up here anyway.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Silence fell, undisturbed.  
  
TJ moved his hand over. Enough.  
  
Fingers curled around fingers, then.  
  
“You’re always here when I need you,” TJ said.  
  
“I love you,” Johnny said. “I love you, TJ Hammond.”  
  
TJ looked at him.  
  
“I didn’t mean to tell you like—” Johnny interrupted himself, stopped, restarted. “I didn’t mean to tell you like that. Just blurting it out. You don’t even have to say it, I know, I’m still figuring out who I even am, I need to grow up, I need to be more like what you deserve, I—”  
  
“I love you,” TJ said.  
  
Johnny stopped talking, holding his hand, eyes huge.  
  
“So,” TJ said, and turned their hands slightly, making sunshine spill over joined fingers. “Let’s figure out who we are.”


	10. epilogue: we sail the ocean blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which pancakes and love, and making love, are important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thank to everyone for cheerleading and inspiring and reading along. I love you more than pineapple pancakes.

They did not make love right away, though they did, eventually; Johnny kissed him unhurriedly and undemandingly under sunlight, surrounded by the motion of water and leaves. TJ smiled; they held hands without speaking. They called Douglas to check in, back at the house; Johnny’d brought both his own phone and TJ’s, though they called from Johnny’s. Douglas answered with relief and hope; TJ said hi and then listened to them talk for a minute. They would like each other, he thought. Both so very good at looking out for other people. Both so good.  
  
He texted Don to say—with Johnny’s hand in his—that he’d like to meet up in person, for lunch with his sponsor, one time next week. He didn’t think they’d need regular in-person meetings again, but he wanted solidity, a connection. He wanted to say thank you.  
  
In his cabin-retreat room with the wood frames and white walls, he kissed Johnny Storm.  
  
Johnny managed a credible lack of surprise, but wistful startlement peeked through: not expecting the initiation of the kiss, not expecting anything more. TJ rested hands on Johnny’s waist, slid them upward, felt athlete’s muscles and strength. Johnny could guide a bike or support a shaken body, with that strength.  
  
He said, “I want you.”  
  
Johnny’s expression did something complicated. “I don’t want to—”  
  
“To push me. I know. But I’m choosing this.” He paused. “If you want.”  
  
“I want you so much,” Johnny whispered. “I love you so much it scares the hell out of me.”  
  
“I think there’s Classic Coke in the kitchen,” TJ said. “I mean, if you feel like sugar. After. Or feeding me sugar. Or whatever.”  
  
“Come here,” Johnny said, laughing now, with shining eager eyes, “and get on your knees, baby.”  
  
TJ smiled sweetly at him, and did as ordered.  
  
Johnny’s skin was flushed and eager too, and Johnny’s hands cradled his head and kept him in place; Johnny took control of him effortlessly, and TJ fell into the strength of that touch and let it lift him up. He gave willingly, and Johnny accepted it all—accepted him—and carried him through.  
  
Johnny put him on his back in bed, trailing kisses everyplace: stomach, a hip, an inner thigh. TJ squirmed, wordless, hypersensitive. Each press of lips or scrape of teeth exploded in riotous color through all his senses.   
  
Naked and commanding, Johnny knelt above him, looking down. “So good. So beautiful, and so goddamn brave, and so good,” that beloved voice told him, “lying there all ready for me, just needing me, the way you want me to take care of you, baby…and you do, don’t you? You want to be _mine_.”  
  
“Yes,” TJ said dreamily, and then he couldn’t seem to stop saying it, “yes, yes, yes, please, sir, yours—”  
  
“Love you.” Johnny kissed his nose. “Do you, um, do we have…any…”  
  
TJ blinked, pulled the word _lube_ out of ribboning golden clouds, blinked again. “Drawer?” He’d never brought anyone here. But he’d gotten himself off a few times, bored and horny, and he’d never settled for anything less than expensive silky lubricants and toys, after all.  
  
“Aha,” Johnny said, triumphant and ridiculous and perfect and perfectly naked; TJ started laughing, floating amid subspace and bliss.  
  
“I made you laugh that very first night,” Johnny said, coming back, sliding a hand over him: only that, only long slow petting, shoulder to hip to thigh, and TJ’s whole body shimmered under the continuous caress. He felt detached, distant, ensorcelled; he felt enchanted and billowy and filled to the brim with sensation.  
  
“I love hearing you laugh,” Johnny said, “especially if I can be the reason, I love you, I love you,” and played with him some more: opening him up, handling him easily, so easily, as if he were in truth only made to be arranged by Johnny Storm’s hands.   
  
When Johnny moved inside him, they both caught breath, amazed; and then Johnny moved more, taking him, claiming him, faster and harder when TJ moaned another yes, and harder still, incontrovertible, fingers biting into hips, mouths meeting and glancing away and back and panting—  
  
They came together, shuddering through the wave and the crest and the ebb.  
  
They slept for some time, naked in each other’s arms.  
  
TJ woke first, watched Johnny sleep—sweat-spiked short dark-blond hair, slightly parted lips, closed eyes with faint smudges of worry lingering beneath them from the previous night—for a minute or two, and then wriggled out of bed. He had an unromantic need to find the restroom and relieve himself; he was also decidedly hungry, and he’d worn Johnny out entirely.  
  
He left a note. It said _I love you and I’m in the kitchen. Come find me. <3_  
  
Johnny wandered in naked nine minutes later, yawning, and draped sleepy arms around him from behind and nuzzled a kiss into his ear. “Love you.”  
  
“I know you do.” TJ twisted his head around to kiss back. “Let me just finish this one.”  
  
“You made pancakes.”  
  
“Chocolate-chip. The pantry didn’t have anything more exotic. Just the basics.” He slid the last one onto the plate, set down pan and spatula. More batter waited in the bowl, but Johnny was here now. “I’ll make you other versions once we’re home. But I wanted to—I thought you might want to. Try them.”  
  
“I want to try everything,” Johnny said, putting arms back around him, “I mean _everything_ , with you.”


End file.
